Download or read book The Human Eros written by Thomas Alexander and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2013-05-21 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Studies in the philosophy of John Dewey, Ralph Waldo Emerson, George Santayana and Native American philosophy that argue for an ecological, aesthetic form of philosophy.
Download or read book The Human Eros written by Thomas M. Alexander and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores themes in classical American philosophy, primarily the thought of John Dewey, but also that of Ralph Waldo Emerson, George Santayana, and Native American traditions. It argues that human beings have an inherent need to experience meaning and value, a 'Human Eros'. Our various cultures are symbolic environments or 'spiritual ecologies' within which the Human Eros seeks to thrive. This is how we inhabit the earth. Encircling and sustaining our cultural existence is nature, yet Western philosophy has not provided adequate conceptual models for thinking ecologically.
Download or read book The Human Eros written by Thomas M. Alexander and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores themes in classical American philosophy, primarily the thought of John Dewey, but also that of Ralph Waldo Emerson, George Santayana, and Native American traditions. It argues that human beings have an inherent need to experience meaning and value, a 'Human Eros'. Our various cultures are symbolic environments or 'spiritual ecologies' within which the Human Eros seeks to thrive. This is how we inhabit the earth. Encircling and sustaining our cultural existence is nature, yet Western philosophy has not provided adequate conceptual models for thinking ecologically.
Download or read book The Human Eros written by Thomas M. Alexander and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2013-07-01 with total page 625 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In these philosophical essays, a leading John Dewey scholar presents a new conceptual framework for exploring human experience as it relates to nature. The Human Eros explores themes in classical American philosophy, primarily the thought of John Dewey, but also that of Ralph Waldo Emerson, George Santayana, and Native American traditions. Using these works as a critical base, Thomas M. Alexander suggests that human beings have an inherent need to experience meaning and value, what he calls a “Human Eros.” Our various cultures are symbolic environments or “spiritual ecologies” within which the Human Eros seeks to thrive. This is how we inhabit the earth. Encircling and sustaining our cultural existence is nature, yet Western philosophy has not provided adequate conceptual models for thinking ecologically. Alexander introduces the idea of “eco-ontology” to explore ways in which this might be done, beginning with the primacy of Nature over Being but also including the recognition of possibility and potentiality as inherent aspects of existence. He argues for the centrality of Dewey’s thought to an effective ecological philosophy. Both “pragmatism” and “naturalism,” he shows, need to be contextualized within an emergentist, relational, nonreductive view of nature and an aesthetic, imaginative, nonreductive view of intelligence.
Download or read book American Philosophy written by John Kaag and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2016-10-11 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The epic wisdom contained in a lost library helps the author turn his life around John Kaag is a dispirited young philosopher at sea in his marriage and his career when he stumbles upon West Wind, a ruin of an estate in the hinterlands of New Hampshire that belonged to the eminent Harvard philosopher William Ernest Hocking. Hocking was one of the last true giants of American philosophy and a direct intellectual descendent of William James, the father of American philosophy and psychology, with whom Kaag feels a deep kinship. It is James’s question “Is life worth living?” that guides this remarkable book. The books Kaag discovers in the Hocking library are crawling with insects and full of mold. But he resolves to restore them, as he immediately recognizes their importance. Not only does the library at West Wind contain handwritten notes from Whitman and inscriptions from Frost, but there are startlingly rare first editions of Hobbes, Descartes, and Kant. As Kaag begins to catalog and read through these priceless volumes, he embarks on a thrilling journey that leads him to the life-affirming tenets of American philosophy—self-reliance, pragmatism, and transcendence—and to a brilliant young Kantian who joins him in the restoration of the Hocking books. Part intellectual history, part memoir, American Philosophy is ultimately about love, freedom, and the role that wisdom can play in turning one’s life around.
Download or read book Eros and the Good written by James S. Gouinlock and published by Prometheus Books. This book was released on 2004-04 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: [Gouinlock] has succeeded in naturalizing the moral life more reliably and coherently than the generation of Dewey, Santayana, and their heirs. . . . may well prove to be a landmark for the philosophical understanding of the moral conception of life in our times. - John P. Anton, University of South Florida. . . No one has done as much as Gouinlock has to tell us how our lives can be made worth living. - Peter H. Hare, State University of New York at Buffalo. . . Must reading for those interested in understanding our current problems. - John Lachs, Vanderbilt UniversityPlato defined eros as the yearning for things beautiful and good. It is on this original sense that philosopher James Gouinlock bases this insightful study of ethics and wisdom. Gouinlock argues that the only fruitful way to evaluate the norms of social life is to understand them as natural forces, not as arbitrary matters of convention or derivatives of some abstract theory. The good life and the meanings of life consist in the recognition and pursuit of values that are already resident in natural experience. Successful pursuit of them requires teaching, the accumulation of wisdom, and the cultivation of virtue. Above all is eros, the motivating force that drives us to search for life's most precious goods. In so doing we acquire a wisdom according to nature.Inspired by Greek philosophy, Gouinlock's approach avoids the pitfalls of moral systems that evolve out of abstract theorizing and tend to ignore well-established practice and conviction. Gouinlock makes the important point that social practices, like natural forces, though subject to change in varying degrees, are rarely amenable to radical overhaul. The real values of common life occur in a difficult, demanding, and often-perilous environment. This is not a context in which anything goes, for it possesses inherent constraints as well as opportunities. As Gouinlock shows in detail, there is much wisdom to be gained from understanding the distinctive functions of nature in the conduct of life.Written with clarity and eloquence, this original and fully developed philosophy of life makes fundamental philosophical arguments accessible to educated lay readers as well as to professional philosophers.James S. Gouinlock (Atlanta, GA) is professor emeritus of philosophy at Emory University and the author or editor of six books, including Rediscovering the Moral Life: Philosophy and Human Practice and The Moral Writings of John Dewey.
Download or read book Eros written by Bruce S Thornton and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-02-12 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eros: The Myth of Ancient Greek Sexuality is a controversial book that lays bare the meanings Greeks gave to sex. Contrary to the romantic idealization of sex dominating our culture, the Greeks saw eros as a powerful force of nature, potentially dangerous, and in need of control by society: Eros the Destroyer, not Cupid the Insipid, fired the Greek imagination.The destructiveness of eros can be seen in Greek imagery and metaphor, and in the Greeks' attitudes toward women and homosexuals. Images of love as fire, disease, storms, insanity, and violence?Top 40 song clichfor us?locate eros among the unpredictable and deadly forces of nature. The beautiful Aphrodite embodies the alluring danger of sex, while femmes fatales like Pandora and Helen represent the risky charms of female sexuality. And homosexuality typifies for the Greeks the frightening power of an indiscriminate appetite that threatens the stability of culture itself.In Eros: The Myth of Ancient Greek Sexuality, Bruce Thornton offers a uniquely sweeping and comprehensive account of ancient sexuality free of currently fashionable theoretical jargon and pretentions. In its conclusions the book challenges the distortions of much recent scholarship on Greek sexuality. And throughout it links the wary attitudes of the Greeks to our present-day concerns about love, sex, and family. What we see, finally, are the origins of some of our own views as well as a vision of sexuality that is perhaps more honest and mature than our own dangerous illusions.
Download or read book The Book of Eros written by Lily Pond and published by Three Rivers Press. This book was released on 1996-06-03 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With more than 35,000 copies in print, Yellow Silk: Erotic Arts and Letters made the bestseller lists of both the San Francisco Chronicle and the Washington Post. This sequel presents more pieces from the award-winning magazine dedicated to the finest in erotic literature and art.
Download or read book Eros written by Don Miguel Ruiz and published by Mystery School Series. This book was released on 2021-09-14 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Don Miguel Ruiz, the author of the classic The Four Agreements and one of the most influential spiritual leaders in the world today, offers students of mystery a new path of knowledge through the most powerful force in the uni-verse: love.
Download or read book Eros Crucified written by Matthew Clemente and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-11-08 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bringing contemporary philosophers, theologians, and psychoanalysts into dialogue with works of art and literature, this work provides a fresh perspective on how humans can make sense of suffering and finitude and how our existence as sexual beings shapes our relations to one another and the divine. It attempts to establish a connection between carnal, bodily love and humanity’s relation to the divine. Relying on the works of philosophers such as Manoussakis, Kearney, and Marion and psychoanalysts such as Freud and Lacan, this book provides a possible answer to these fundamental questions and fosters further dialogue between thinkers and scholars of these different fields. The author analyzes why human sexuality implies both perversion and perfection and why it brings together humanity’s baseness and beatitude. Through it, the author taps once more into the dark mystery of Eros and Thanatos who, to paraphrase Dostoevsky, forever struggle with God on the battlefield of the human heart. This book is written primarily for scholars interested in the fields of philosophical psychology, existential philosophy, and philosophy of religion
Download or read book Eros written by Rosaura Martínez Ruiz and published by Fordham University Press. This book was released on 2021-10-05 with total page 127 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eros considers a promise left unfulfilled in Sigmund Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle. Rosaura Martínez Ruiz argues that when the pleasure principle comes into contact with the death drive (the human tendency toward aggression or cruelty), the psyche can take detours that, without going beyond the limit of the pleasure principle, can nevertheless defer it. Eros reflects on these deviations of the pleasure principle, in the political sphere and in the intimate realm. Following these erotic paths, Martínez argues that the forces of the death drive can only be resisted if resistance is understood as an ongoing process. In such an effort, erotic action and the construction of pathways for sublimation are never-ending ethical and political tasks. We know that these tasks cannot be finally accomplished, yet they remain imperative and undeniably urgent. If psychoanalysis and deconstruction teach us that the death drive is insurmountable, through aesthetic creation and political action we can nevertheless delay, defer, and postpone it. Calling for the formation and maintenance of a “community of mourning duelists,” this book seeks to imagine and affirm the kind of “erotic battalion” that might yet be mobilized against injustice. This battalion’s mourning, Martínez argues, must be ongoing, open-ended, combative, and tenaciously committed to the complexity of ethical and political life.
Download or read book Eros written by Linda Ferrer and published by Stewart, Tabori, & Chang. This book was released on 1996 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In Eros, the subtle and profound nuances of the erotic nature of relationships between men and women are explored through a collection of black-and-white photographs that are coupled with inspired, passionate words. Among the photographers whose visions comprise this volume are some of the great masters - Brassai, Imogen Cunningham, Horst, Man Ray, Minor White, Edward Weston - as well as many celebrated contemporary artists - Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Hiro, Annie Leibovitz, Robert Mapplethorpe, Duane Michals, Helmut Newton, and Albert Watson, among others. Deeply involved as they are with the relationship between seeing and feeling, their images take us on a rich visual journey ranging from the eloquent beauty of the human form to the complexity of body language motivated by desire." "This compendium of expressive photographs is accented with a variety of literary selections drawn from the work of writers such as Margaret Atwood, Siv Cedering, John Cleland, E. E. Cummings, Michael Fried, Robert Graves, Erica Jong, D. H. Lawrence, Henry Miller, Anais Nin, Carson Reed, Dylan Thomas, and Walt Whitman. Embracing the spectrum of the erotic experience - from quiet intimacy and meditation to frank lust and reckless abandon - their words highlight the power of Eros not only to thrill and delight but also to uplift and transform."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Download or read book Eros And Evolution written by Richard E Michod and published by Addison Wesley Publishing Company. This book was released on 1995-01-20 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A bee lands on a blossom, a stag rears back his head in bellowing, a human couple lies exhausted in passionate embrace. The flower, the deer, the human, even the unseen virus - they all must have sex. But why? When we think of sex, we may think of the pleasure and pain it causes us. But there is a more fundamental problem of sex. It is the unresolved question of why sex exists at all. What are the consequences of sex that make it so important to us and so widespread in nature? The answer to this question lies not in our own attitudes and feelings about sex, but deep in our evolutionary past. Why did sex evolve as the means for reproduction for many species? Sex requires a huge commitment of time, energy, and resources, and it can even be physically dangerous. Sex is not the only path to reproduction - simple life forms do not practice sexual mating; offspring are produced by simple cell division. There are examples of higher life forms that practice asexual reproduction, in which the female reproduces alone. "Why sex?" is a question that was first raised by Charles Darwin in his Origin of the Species, and the answer has eluded biologists for over a century. In Eros and Evolution Richard Michod, a leading evolutionary biologist, begins his exploration into this question by pointing out the fatal flaws in the widely accepted "variation view", that sex is necessary for producing more diverse offspring than could be produced asexually. Chief among those flaws is the fact that sex undoes what it creates, producing a beneficial new combination of genes in one generation only to break it apart in the next. Michod argues that genetic variation and reproduction of organisms are side effects butnot the sole purpose of sex. According to his revolutionary theory, sex has a more far-reaching mission: to repair and overcome the genetic errorsdamages and mutations - that threaten life. With lucid explanations and intriguing excursions into our evolutionary past, this book shows how sex maintains the well-being of genes and in so doing, provides for the immortality of life itself. Yet, why sex exists is only part of the fascinating story in Eros and Evolution. This book also considers why it matters that sex exists. Michod deconstructs Darwin to explore such questions as "Why are there species?" and "Do organisms - as wonderfully designed as they are - really matter in evolution, or are they merely vehicles for the perpetuation of genes?" In the process he shows how what began as a necessary but mechanical process of gene repair has ended up forever changing the landscape of the living world.
Download or read book Eros Agape and Philia written by Alan Soble and published by Paragon House Publishers. This book was released on 1989 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The philosophy of loveFor centuries, popular writers and respected scholars have written about and analyzed the phenomenon of love without exhausting its potential for contemporary debate. By representing the three major traditions in the philosophy of love--Platonic eros, Christian agape, and Aristotelian philia--editor Alan Soble has not only examined the intellectual problem of what "love" is, but has designed a dialogue among the three traditions in genuine philosophical style. "Eros is acquisitive, egocentric or even selfish; agape is a giving love. Eros is an unconstant, unfaithful love, while agape is unwavering and continues to give despite ingratitude. Eros is a love that responds to the merit or value of its object; while agape creates value in its object as a result of loving it... Finally, eros is an ascending love, the human's route to God; agape is a descending love, GodÆs route to humans... Philia is caught between eros and agape."--From the Introduction to Eros, Agape and Philia ISSUES EXPLORED: --What is the state of love today as seen through the eyes of Plato, Aristotle, and Paul? --How do relations between the sexes illustrate the difficulties of love? --What are the nature and effects of exclusivity, reciprocity, and constancy? --What are the conceptual and psychological ties between sex and love? --Does it make any sense to think of love in moral terms?
Download or read book Eros and Revolution written by Javier Sethness Castro and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2016-06-10 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Eros and Revolution, Javier Sethness Castro presents a comprehensive intellectual and political biography of the critical theorist Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979), investigating the Hegelian-Marxist, Romantic, existentialist, social-psychological, and anti-authoritarian dimensions of his thought, as well as his contemporary relevance.
Download or read book The Four Loves written by Clive Staples Lewis and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 1991 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Analyzes the feelings and problems involved in different types of human love, including familial affection, friendship, passion, and charity.
Download or read book Listening to the Land written by Derrick Jensen and published by Chelsea Green Publishing. This book was released on 2004-03-01 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this far-ranging and heartening collection, Derrick Jensen gathers conversations with environmentalists, theologians, Native Americans, psychologists, and feminists, engaging some of our best minds in an exploration of more peaceful ways to live on Earth. Included here is Dave Foreman on biodiversity, Matthew Fox on Christianity and nature, Jerry Mander on technology, and Terry Tempest Williams on an erotic connection to the land. With intelligence and compassion, Listening to the Land moves from a look at the condition of the environment and the health of our spirit to a beautiful evocation of eros and a life based on love.
