Download or read book Making Spirit Matter written by Larry Sommer McGrath and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The problem of the relation between mind and brain has been among the most persistent in modern Western thought, one that even recent advances in neuroscience haven't been able to put to rest. Historian Larry McGrath's Making Spirit Matter is about how a particularly productive and influential generation of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century French thinkers attempted to answer this puzzle by showing the mutual dependence of spirit and matter. The veritable revolution taking place across disciplines, from philosophy to psychology, located our spiritual powers in the brain and offered a radical reformulation of the meaning of science, spirit, and the self. Pulling out connections between thinkers such as Bergson, Blondel, and FouilleáI p1 se, among others, McGrath plots the intellectual movements that brought back to life themes of agency, time, and experience by putting into action the very sciences that seemed to undermine metaphysics and theology. In so doing, Making Spirit Matter lays bare the long legacy of this moment in the history of ideas and how it might renew our understanding of the relationship between mind and brain"--
Download or read book Laboratories of Faith written by John Warne Monroe and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-07-05 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At a fascinating moment in French intellectual history, an interest in matters occult was not equivalent to a rejection of scientific thought; participants in séances and magic rituals were seekers after experimental data as well as spiritual truth. A young astronomy student wrote of his quest: "I am not in the presence or under the influence of any evil spirit: I study Spiritism as I study mathematics." He did not see himself as an ecstatic visionary but rather as a sober observer. For him, the darkened room of occult practice was as much laboratory as church. In an evocative history of alternative religious practices in France in the second half of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, John Warne Monroe tells the interconnected stories of three movements—Mesmerism, Spiritism, and Occultism. Adherents of these groups, Monroe reveals, attempted to "modernize" faith by providing empirical support for metaphysical concepts. Instead of trusting theological speculation about the nature of the soul, these believers attempted to gather tangible evidence through Mesmeric experiments, séances, and ceremonial magic. While few French people were active Mesmerists, Spiritists, or Occultists, large segments of the educated general public were familiar with these movements and often regarded them as fascinating expressions of the "modern condition," a notable contrast to the Catholicism and secular materialism that prevailed in their culture. Featuring eerie spirit photographs, amusing Daumier lithographs, and a posthumous autograph from Voltaire, as well as extensive documentary evidence, Laboratories of Faith gives readers a sense of what being in a séance or a secret-society ritual might actually have felt like and why these feelings attracted participants. While they never achieved the transformation of human consciousness for which they strove, these thinkers and believers nevertheless pioneered a way of "being religious" that has become an enduring part of the Western cultural vocabulary.
Download or read book The Spirit of French Capitalism written by Charly Coleman and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book offers a new take on why, in the West, the economy has become synonymous with a belief in the creation of infinite wealth. It does so by turning to the long-suppressed role played by the Catholic Church in the development of capitalism in 18th-century France. Then a dominant and highly influential power, France was rocked by intellectual tumult and confessional clashes, as well as consumer and political revolutions. The church functioned as a de facto state bank, and its clerics thought deeply and extensively about financial matters. Charly Coleman argues that these theologians' long neglected writings show a convergence of economic thought grounded in theological concepts --- what he terms "economic theology" --- whether in managing the debt of sin or marshaling the infinite wealth of divine grace. A counterpart of sorts to Max Weber's famous thesis on The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, the case here is made for a distinctly Catholic ethic, one that has animated the spirit of capitalism from its inception. The influence of sacramental theory demonstrates that at its core modern economic understanding does not adhere neatly to rational action or disenchanted designs, and in ways that scholars have yet to apprehend fully. Even during the Enlightenment, a sense of the miraculous did not wither away in the cold light of calculation. Rather, it emerged anew as a faith invested in the limitless, endlessly creative expansion of the economic realm"--
Download or read book The History of Modern France written by Jonathan Fenby and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-07-02 with total page 717 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte at the Battle of Waterloo in June 1815, the next two centuries for France would be tumultuous. Bestselling historian and political commentator Jonathan Fenby provides an expert and riveting journey through this period as he recounts and analyses the extraordinary sequence of events of this period from the end of the First Revolution through two others, a return of Empire, three catastrophic wars with Germany, periods of stability and hope interspersed with years of uncertainty and high tensions. As her cross-Channel neighbour Great Britain would equally suffer, France was to undergo the wrenching loss of colonies in the post-Second World War as the new modern world we know today took shape. Her attempts to become the leader of the European union is a constant struggle, as was her lack of support for America in the two Gulf Wars of the past twenty years. Alongside this came huge social changes and cultural landmarks but also fundamental questioning of what this nation, which considers itself exceptional, really stood - and stands - for. That saga and those questions permeate the France of today, now with an implacable enemy to face in the form of Islamic extremism which so bloodily announced itself this year in Paris. Fenby will detail every event, every struggle and every outcome across this expanse of 200 years. It will prove to be the definitive guide to understanding France.
Download or read book Unruly Spirits written by M. Brady Brower and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2010-10-07 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unruly Spirits connects the study of séances, telepathy, telekinesis, materializations, and other parapsychic phenomena in France during the age of Sigmund Freud to an epistemological crisis that would eventually yield the French adoption of psychoanalysis. Skillfully navigating experiments conducted by nineteenth-century French psychical researchers and the wide-ranging debates that surrounded their work, M. Brady Brower situates the institutional development of psychical research at the intersection of popular faith and the emergent discipline of psychology. Brower shows how spiritualist mediums were ignored by French academic scientists for nearly three decades. Only after the ideologues of the Third Republic turned to science to address what they took to be the excess of popular democracy would the marvels of mediumism begin to emerge as legitimate objects of scientific inquiry. Taken up by the most prominent physicists, physiologists, and psychologists of the last decades of the nineteenth century, psychical research would eventually stall in the 1920s as researchers struggled to come to terms with interpersonal phenomena (such as trust and good faith) that could not be measured within the framework of their experimental methods. In characterizing psychical research as something other than a mere echo of popular spirituality or an anomaly among the sciences, Brower argues that the questions surrounding mediums served to sustain the scientific project by forestalling the establishment of a closed and complete system of knowledge. By acknowledging persistent doubt about the intentions of its participants, psychical research would result in the realization of a subjectivity that was essentially indeterminate and would thus clear the way for the French reception of psychoanalysis and the Freudian unconscious and its more comprehensive account of subjective uncertainty.
Download or read book On the Spirit of Rights written by Dan Edelstein and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2021-06 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By the end of the eighteenth century, politicians in America and France were invoking the natural rights of man to wrest sovereignty away from kings and lay down universal basic entitlements. Exactly how and when did “rights” come to justify such measures? In On the Spirit of Rights, Dan Edelstein answers this question by examining the complex genealogy of the rights that regimes enshrined in the American and French Revolutions. With a lively attention to detail, he surveys a sprawling series of debates among rulers, jurists, philosophers, political reformers, writers, and others who were all engaged in laying the groundwork for our contemporary systems of constitutional governance. Every seemingly new claim about rights turns out to be a variation on a theme, as late medieval notions were subtly repeated and refined to yield the talk of “rights” we recognize today. From the Wars of Religion to the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen to the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, On the Spirit of Rights is a sweeping tour through centuries of European intellectual history and an essential guide to our ways of thinking about human rights today.
Download or read book Paris and the Spirit of 1919 written by Tyler Edward Stovall and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-03-22 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This history of Paris in 1919 explores the global implications of French political activism at the end of World War I.
Download or read book How the French Think written by Sudhir Hazareesingh and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2015-09-22 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An award-winning historian presents an absorbing account of the French mind, shedding light on France's famous tradition of intellectual life Why are the French such an exceptional nation? Why do they think they are so exceptional? The French take pride in the fact that their history and culture have decisively shaped the values and ideals of the modern world. French ideas are no less distinct in their form: while French thought is abstract, stylish and often opaque, it has always been bold and creative, and driven by the relentless pursuit of innovation. In How the French Think, the internationally-renowned historian Sudhir Hazareesingh tells the epic and tumultuous story of French intellectual thought from Descartes, Rousseau, and Auguste Comte to Sartre, Claude Lé-Strauss, and Derrida. He shows how French thinking has shaped fundamental Westerns ideas about freedom, rationality, and justice, and how the French mind-set is intimately connected to their own way of life-in particular to the French tendency towards individualism, their passion for nature, their celebration of their historical heritage, and their fascination with death. Hazareesingh explores the French veneration of dissent and skepticism, from Voltaire to the Dreyfus Affair and beyond; the obsession with the protection of French language and culture; the rhetorical flair embodied by the philosophes, which today's intellectuals still try to recapture; the astonishing influence of French postmodern thinkers, including Foucault and Barthes, on postwar American education and life, and also the growing French anxiety about a globalized world order under American hegemony. How the French Think sweeps aside generalizations and easy stereotypes to offer an incisive and revealing exploration of the French intellectual tradition. Steeped in a colorful range of sources, and written with warmth and humor, this book will appeal to all lovers of France and of European culture.
Download or read book Against the Spirit of System written by John Harley Warner and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2003-11-12 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this wide-ranging exploration of American medical culture, John Harley Warner offers the first in-depth study of a powerful intellectual and social influence: the radical empiricism of the Paris Clinical School. After the French Revolution, Paris emerged as the most vibrant center of Western medicine, bringing fundamental changes in understanding disease and attitudes toward the human body as an object of scientific knowledge. Between the 1810s and the 1860s, hundreds of Americans studied in Parisian hospitals and dissection rooms, and then applied their new knowledge to advance their careers at home and reform American medicine. By reconstructing their experiences and interpretations, by comparing American with English depictions of French medicine, and by showing how American memories of Paris shaped the later reception of German ideals of scientific medicine, Warner reveals that the French impulse was a key ingredient in creating the modern medicine American doctors and patients live with today. Impressed by the opportunity to learn through direct hands-on physical examination and dissection, many American students in Paris began to decry the elaborate theoretical schemes they held responsible for the degraded state of American medicine. These reformers launched an empiricist crusade "against the spirit of system," which promised social, economic, and intellectual uplift for their profession. Using private diaries, family letters, and student notebooks, and exploring regionalism, gender, and class, Warner draws readers into the world of medical Americans while investigating tensions between the physician's identity as scientist and as healer.
Download or read book Transnational France written by Tyler Stovall and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-04-20 with total page 439 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this compelling volume, Tyler Stovall takes a transnational approach to the history of modern France, and by doing so draws the reader into a key aspect of France's political culture: universalism. Beginning with the French Revolution and its aftermath, Stovall traces the definitive establishment of universal manhood suffrage and the abolition of slavery in 1848. Following this critical time in France's history, Stovall then explores the growth of urban and industrial society, the beginnings of mass immigration, and the creation of a new, republican Empire. This time period gives way to the history of the two world wars, the rise of political movements like Communism and Fascism, and new directions in popular culture. The text concludes with the history of France during the Fourth and Fifth republics, concentrating on decolonization and the rise of postcolonial society and culture. Throughout these major historical events Stovall examines France's relations with three other areas of the world: Europe, the United States, and France's colonial empire, which includes a wealth of recent historical studies. By exploring these three areas-and their political, social, and cultural relations with France-the text will provide new insights into both the nature of French identity and the making of the modern world in general.
Download or read book The Powers of Sound and Song in Early Modern Paris written by Nicholas Hammond and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2020-01-16 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The long and spectacular reign of Louis XIV of France is typically described in overwhelmingly visual terms. In this book, Nicholas Hammond takes a sonic approach to this remarkable age, opening our ears to the myriad ways in which sound revealed the complex acoustic dimensions of class, politics, and sexuality in seventeenth-century Paris. The discovery in the French archives of a four-line song from 1661 launched Hammond’s research into the lives of the two men referenced therein—Jacques Chausson and Guillaume de Guitaut. In retracing the lives of these two men (one sentenced to death by burning and the other appointed to the Ordre du Saint-Esprit), Hammond makes astonishing discoveries about each man and the ways in which their lives intersected, all in the context of the sounds and songs heard in the court of Louis XIV and on the streets and bridges of Paris. Hammond’s study shows how members of the elite and lower classes in Paris crossed paths in unexpected ways and, moreover, how noise in the ancien régime was central to questions of crime and punishment: street singing was considered a crime in itself, and yet street singers flourished, circulating information about crimes that others may have committed, while political and religious authorities wielded the powerful sounds of sermons and public executions to provide moral commentaries, to control crime, and to inflict punishment. This innovative study explores the theoretical, social, cultural, and historical contexts of the early modern Parisian soundscape. It will appeal to scholars interested in sound studies and the history of sexuality as well as those who study the culture, literature, and history of early modern France.
Download or read book Modern France written by Vanessa R. Schwartz and published by OUP USA. This book was released on 2011-10-10 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The French Revolution, politics and the modern nation -- French and the civilizing mission -- Paris and magnetic appeal -- France stirs up the melting pot -- France hurtles into the future.
Download or read book When The World Spoke French written by Marc Fumaroli and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2011-06-14 with total page 561 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Review Books Original During the eighteenth century, from the death of Louis XIV until the Revolution, French culture set the standard for all of Europe. In Sweden, Austria, Italy, Spain, England, Russia, and Germany, among kings and queens, diplomats, military leaders, writers, aristocrats, and artists, French was the universal language of politics and intellectual life. In When the World Spoke French, Marc Fumaroli presents a gallery of portraits of Europeans and Americans who conversed and corresponded in French, along with excerpts from their letters or other writings. These men and women, despite their differences, were all irresistibly attracted to the ideal of human happiness inspired by the Enlightenment, whose capital was Paris and whose king was Voltaire. Whether they were in Paris or far away, speaking French connected them in spirit with all those who desired to emulate Parisian tastes, style of life, and social pleasures. Their stories are testaments to the appeal of that famous “sweetness of life” nourished by France and its language.
Download or read book Modern France 1789 1895 written by André Lebon and published by . This book was released on 1897 with total page 522 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Story of Modern France written by Hélène Adeline Guerber and published by . This book was released on 1910 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Gabriel Kreuther written by Gabriel Kreuther and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2021-11-09 with total page 695 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From award-winning chef Gabriel Kreuther, the definitive cookbook on rustic French cooking from Alsace Gabriel Kreuther is the cookbook fans of the James Beard Award-winning chef have long been waiting for. From one of the most respected chefs in the United States, this cookbook showcases the recipes inspired by Kreuther’s French-Swiss-German training and refined global style, one that embraces the spirits of both Alsace, his homeland, and of New York City, his adopted home. Sharing his restaurant creations and interpretations of traditional Alsatian dishes, Kreuther will teach the proper techniques for making every dish, whether simple or complex, a success. Recipes include everything from the chef's take on classic Alsatian food like the delicious Flammekueche (or Tarte Flambée) and hearty Baeckeoffe (a type of casserole stew) to modern dishes like the flavorful Roasted Button Mushroom Soup served with Toasted Chorizo Raviolis and the decadent Salmon Roe Beggar’s Purse garnished with Gold Leaf. Featuring personal stories from the chef's childhood in France and career in New York as well as stunning photography, Gabriel Kreuther is the definitive resource for Alsatian cooking worthy of fine dining.
Download or read book The Human Tradition in Modern France written by K. Steven Vincent and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2000 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This engaging textbook provides a human perspective of the history of France from 1789 to the present through essays that highlight individuals and intriguing events that too often have been lost under labels and statistics. Students will gain an understanding of the humor and passion in French history from these original chpaters by established scholars. This collection also relates the individuals, events, and controversies to current historiographical debates. The Human Tradition in Modern France is an excellent supplementary text for courses on French history, as well as on Western Civilization.
