Download or read book Reverence written by Paul Woodruff and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2014 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reverence is an ancient virtue that survives among us in half-forgotten patterns of civility and moments of inarticulate awe. Reverence gives meaning to much that we do, yet the word has almost passed out of our vocabulary. Reverence, says philosopher and classicist Paul Woodruff, begins in an understanding of human limitations. From this grows the capacity to be in awe of whatever we believe lies outside our control -- God, truth, justice, nature, even death. It is a quality of character that is especially important in leadership and in teaching, although it figures in virtually every human relationship. It transcends religious boundaries and can be found outside religion altogether. Woodruff draws on thinking about this lost virtue in ancient Greek and Chinese traditions and applies lessons from these highly reverent cultures to today's world. The book covers reverence in a variety of contexts -- the arts, leadership, teaching, warfare, and the home -- and shows how essential a quality it is to a well-functioning society. First published by Oxford University Press in 2001, this new edition of Reverence is revised and expanded. It contains a foreword by Betty Sue Flowers, Distinguished Teaching Professor Emeritus at the University of Texas at Austin, a new preface, two new chapters -- one on the sacred and one on compassion -- and an epilogue focused on renewing reverence in our own lives.
Download or read book The Ajax Dilemma written by Paul Woodruff and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-10-20 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We live in a world where CEOs give themselves million dollar bonuses even as their companies go bankrupt and ordinary workers are laid off; where athletes make millions while teachers struggle to survive; a world, in short, where rewards are often unfairly meted out. In The Ajax Dilemma, Paul Woodruff examines one of today's most pressing moral issues: how to distribute rewards and public recognition without damaging the social fabric. How should we honor those whose behavior and achievement is essential to our overall success? Is it fair or right to lavish rewards on the superstar at the expense of the hardworking rank-and-file? How do we distinguish an impartial fairness from what is truly just? Woodruff builds his answer to these questions around the ancient conflict between Ajax and Odysseus over the armor of the slain warrior Achilles. King Agamemnon arranges a speech contest to decide the issue. Ajax, the loyal workhorse, loses the contest, and the priceless armor, to Odysseus, the brilliantly deceptive strategist who will lead the Greeks to victory. Deeply insulted, Ajax goes on a rampage and commits suicide, and in his rage we see the resentment of every loyal worker who has been passed over in favor of those who are more gifted, or whose skills are more highly valued. How should we deal with the "Ajax dilemma"? Woodruff argues that while we can never create a perfect system for distributing just rewards, we can recognize the essential role that wisdom, compassion, moderation, and respect must play if we are to restore the basic sense of justice on which all communities depend. This short, thoughtful book, written with Woodruff's characteristic elegance, investigates some of the most bitterly divisive issues in American today.
Download or read book The Necessity of Theater written by Paul Woodruff and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008-04-30 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is unique and essential about theater? What separates it from other arts? Do we need "theater" in some fundamental way? The art of theater, as Paul Woodruff says in this elegant and unique book, is as necessary - and as powerful - as language itself. Defining theater broadly, including sporting events and social rituals, he treats traditional theater as only one possibility in an art that - at its most powerful - can change lives and (as some peoples believe) bring a divine presence to earth. The Necessity of Theater analyzes the unique power of theater by separating it into the twin arts of watching and being watched, practiced together in harmony by watchers and the watched. Whereas performers practice the art of being watched - making their actions worth watching, and paying attention to action, choice, plot, character, mimesis, and the sacredness of performance space - audiences practice the art of watching: paying close attention. A good audience is emotionally engaged as spectators; their engagement takes a form of empathy that can lead to a special kind of human wisdom. As Plato implied, theater cannot teach us transcendent truths, but it can teach us about ourselves. Characteristically thoughtful, probing, and original, Paul Woodruff makes the case for theater as a unique form of expression connected to our most human instincts. The Necessity of Theater should appeal to anyone seriously interested or involved in theater or performance more broadly.
Download or read book The Garden of Leaders written by Paul Woodruff and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Garden of Leaders, philosopher Paul Woodruff advances a new view of liberal arts education that places leadership at the root of everything it does, presenting three core sets of recommendations for how the contemporary university can and should foster such leadership skills.
Download or read book The Ethics of Giving written by Paul Woodruff and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In giving to charity, should we strive to do the greatest good or promote a lesser good? This is a unique collection of new papers on philanthropy from a range of philosophical perspectives, including intuitionism, virtue ethics, Kantian ethics, utilitarianism, theories of justice, and ideals of personal integrity.
Download or read book Facing Evil written by Paul Woodruff and published by Open Court Publishing. This book was released on 2001 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From slavery to the Holocaust to the destruction of the World Trade Center, the specter of human evil continues to haunt and defy all attempts at explanation. This collection of lectures - given at a symposium on evil by prominent scholars, writers, theologians and philosophers - resonates powerfully as we continue to confront the devastation wrought by even a single individual caught in the grip of evil.
Download or read book First Democracy written by Paul Woodruff and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2006-03-16 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This brilliant analysis of the nature of democracy draws on the hard-earned lessons of the ancient Greeks.
Download or read book On Justice Power Human Nature written by Thucydides and published by Hackett Publishing Company Incorporated. This book was released on 1993 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Designed for students with little or no background in ancient Greek language and culture, this collection of extracts from The History of the Peloponnesian War includes those passages that shed most light on Thucydides' political theory--famous as well as important but lesser-known pieces frequently overlooked by nonspecialists. Newly translated into spare, vigorous English, and situated within a connective narrative framework, Woodruff's selections will be of special interest to instructors in political theory and Greek civilization. Includes maps, notes, glossary.
Download or read book The Hippias Major written by Plato and published by . This book was released on 1928 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Paul Woodruff written by Mary Helen Thompson Professor of the Humanities Paul Woodruff and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2015-01-28 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Veterans' issues are front and center now, after Iraq and Afghanistan, as they were not after Vietnam. This is a good time to put before the public the texts of these two plays, which were started during the author's tour of duty in Vietnam and finished soon after. A soldier returns from a long war, expecting a welcome, and no one recognizes him. In his own house he is treated like a beggar. This is the ancient story of Ulysses, but it also expresses how many veterans feel today. How can any civilian understand what soldiers have seen and done? How can civilians take back into their arms veterans who have blood on their hands? In Ithaca in Black and White we see a modern Ulysses as he discovers that he has no place in the home he has dreamed about, but he finds promise in a fresh courtship of his former wife and a journey onward. The play won an award in Austin, Texas, as the best new script of 1983. Geoffroy's Jerusalem tells the tale of a crusade that began with a noble cause and ended with the tawdry sack of a great city, Byzantium. The chief of staff of the army tries to persuade God, in scene after scene, that the corruption of the war was not his fault. War easily gets out of hand, and the violence generals plan so easily goes beyond their intentions. We in the audience sympathize with Geoffroy, but, like him, we are horrified by what he had brought about.
Download or read book Early Greek Political Thought from Homer to the Sophists written by Michael Gagarin and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1995-09-21 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Including the works of more than thirty authors, this edition of early Greek writings on social and political issues includes the origin of human society and law; the nature of justice and good government; the distribution of power among genders and social classes.
Download or read book Reason and Religion in Socratic Philosophy written by Nicholas D. Smith and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2000 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume brings together mostly previously unpublished studies by prominent historians, classicists, and philosophers on the roles and effects of religion in Socratic philosophy and on the trial of Socrates. Among the contributors are Thomas C. Brickhouse, Asli Gocer, Richard Kraut, Mark L. McPherran, Robert C. T. Parker, C. D. C. Reeve, Nicholas D. Smith, Gregory Vlastos, Stephen A. White, and Paul B. Woodruff.
Download or read book The Electra Plays written by and published by Hackett Publishing. This book was released on 2009-03-15 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Aeschylus: The Libation Bearers; Euripides: Electra; Sophocles: Electra
Download or read book The Oedipus Plays of Sophocles written by Paul Woodruff and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-07-02 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Oedipus presents ceaseless paradoxes that have fascinated readers for centuries. He is proud of his intellect, but he does not know himself and succumbs easily to self-deceptions. As a ruler he expresses the greatest good will toward his people, but as an exile he will do nothing to save them from their enemies. Faced with a damning prophecy, he tries to take destiny into his own hands and fails. Realizing this, he struggles at the end of his life for a serenity that seems to elude him. In his last misery, he is said to illustrate the tragic lament that it is better not to be born, or, once born, better to die young than to live into old age. Such are the themes a set of powerful thinkers take on in this volume-self-knowledge, self-deception, destiny, the value of a human life. There are depths to the Oedipus tragedies that only philosophers can plumb; readers who know the plays will be startled by what they find in this volume. There is nothing in literature to compare with the Oedipus plays of Sophocles that let us see the same basic myth through different lenses. The first play was the product of a poet in vibrant late middle age, the second of a man who was probably in his eighties, with the vision of a very old poet still at the height of his powers. In the volume's introduciton, Paul Woodruff provides historical backdrop to Sophocles and the plays, and connections to the contributions by philosophers and classicists that follow.
Download or read book A Companion to Ancient Aesthetics written by Pierre Destrée and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2015-07-20 with total page 547 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first of its kind, A Companion to Ancient Aesthetics presents a synoptic view of the arts, which crosses traditional boundaries and explores the aesthetic experience of the ancients across a range of media—oral, aural, visual, and literary. Investigates the many ways in which the arts were experienced and conceptualized in the ancient world Explores the aesthetic experience of the ancients across a range of media, treating literary, oral, aural, and visual arts together in a single volume Presents an integrated perspective on the major themes of ancient aesthetics which challenges traditional demarcations Raises questions about the similarities and differences between ancient and modern ways of thinking about the place of art in society
Download or read book Oedipus Tyrannus written by Sophocles and published by W W Norton & Company Incorporated. This book was released on 1970 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The text is accompanied by a wealth of carefully chosen backgroundmaterials and essays. "Passages from Ancient Authors" includes selections from Homer's Odyssey,Thucydides' account of the plague, and Euripedes' Phoenissae. The best of ancient and modern criticism is represented, encouragingdiscussion from psychological, religious, anthropological, dramatic,and literary perspectives. Under the heading "Religion and Psychology" are included writings on theOedipus myth by Martin P. Nilsson, Meyer Fortes, Gordon M. Kirkwood,Thalia Phillies Feldman, and Sigmund Freud. The authors of the selections in "Criticism" are Aristotle, C. M. Bowra,R. C. Jebb, S. M. Adams, A. J. A. Waldock, Albin Lesky, Werner Jaeger,Friedrich Nietzsche, John Jones, D. W. Lucas, Bernard M. W. Knox,Cedric H. Whitman, Richmond Lattimore, Robert Cohen, Francis Fergusson,and H. D. F. Kitto. The special question of Oedipus's guilt or innocence is addressed inessays by J. T. Sheppard, Laszlo Versenyi, P. H. Vellacott, E. R.Dodds, Thomas Gould, and Philip Wheelwright.
Download or read book In an Instant written by Lee Woodruff and published by Random House. This book was released on 2007-05-01 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In one of the most anticipated books of the year, Lee Woodruff, along with her husband, Bob Woodruff, share their never-before-told story of romance, resilience, and survival following the tragedy that transformed their lives and gripped a nation. In January 2006, the Woodruffs seemed to have it all–a happy marriage and four beautiful children. Lee was a public relations executive and Bob had just been named co-anchor of ABC’s World News Tonight. Then, while Bob was embedded with the military in Iraq, an improvised explosive device went off near the tank he was riding in. He and his cameraman, Doug Vogt, were hit, and Bob suffered a traumatic brain injury that nearly killed him. In an Instant is the frank and compelling account of how Bob and Lee’s lives came together, were blown apart, and then were miraculously put together again–and how they persevered, with grit but also with humor, through intense trauma and fear. Here are Lee’s heartfelt memories of their courtship, their travels as Bob left a law practice behind and pursued his news career and Lee her freelance business, the glorious births of her children and the challenges of motherhood. Bob in turn recalls the moment he caught the journalism “bug” while covering Tiananmen Square for CBS News, his love of overseas assignments and his guilt about long separations from his family, and his pride at attaining the brass ring of television news–being chosen to fill the seat of the late Peter Jennings. And, for the first time, the Woodruffs reveal the agonizing details of Bob’s terrible injuries and his remarkable recovery. We learn that Bob’s return home was not an end to the journey but the first step into a future they have learned not to fear but to be grateful for. In an Instant is much more than the dual memoir of love and courage. It is an important, wise, and inspiring guide to coping with tragedy–and an extraordinary drama of marriage, family, war, and nation. A percentage of the proceeds from this book will be donated to the Bob Woodruff Family Fund for Traumatic Brain Injury.
