Download or read book Divination and Human Nature written by Peter Struck and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-23 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Divination and Human Nature casts a new perspective on the rich tradition of ancient divination—the reading of divine signs in oracles, omens, and dreams. Popular attitudes during classical antiquity saw these readings as signs from the gods while modern scholars have treated such beliefs as primitive superstitions. In this book, Peter Struck reveals instead that such phenomena provoked an entirely different accounting from the ancient philosophers. These philosophers produced subtle studies into what was an odd but observable fact—that humans could sometimes have uncanny insights—and their work signifies an early chapter in the cognitive history of intuition. Examining the writings of Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, and the Neoplatonists, Struck demonstrates that they all observed how, setting aside the charlatans and swindlers, some people had premonitions defying the typical bounds of rationality. Given the wide differences among these ancient thinkers, Struck notes that they converged on seeing this surplus insight as an artifact of human nature, projections produced under specific conditions by our physiology. For the philosophers, such unexplained insights invited a speculative search for an alternative and more naturalistic system of cognition. Recovering a lost piece of an ancient tradition, Divination and Human Nature illustrates how philosophers of the classical era interpreted the phenomena of divination as a practice closer to intuition and instinct than magic.
Download or read book Cicero on the Philosophy of Religion written by J. P. F. Wynne and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-10-17 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Do the gods love you? Cicero gives deep and surprising answers in two philosophical dialogues on traditional Roman religion.
Download or read book Hierarchy History and Human Nature written by Donald E. Brown and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 1988 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Here is a book that I can strongly recommend for a variety of reasons. It is well written, it is scholarly, but its greatest appeal lies in the posing of an important question and in the offering of a satisfying (to this reviewer, at least) answer."ÑJournal of Historical Geography "This is an intriguing and stimulating study of historical differences in the indigenous historiography of parts of Asia, the Middle East, and Europe."ÑAmerican Anthropologist."
Download or read book Ancient Greek Divination written by Sarah Iles Johnston and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2009-04-22 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first English-language survey of ancient Greek divinatorymethods, Ancient Greek Divination offers a broad yetdetailed treatment of the earliest attempts by ancient Greeks toseek the counsel of the gods. Offers in-depth discussions of oracles, wandering diviners,do-it-yourself methods of foretelling the future, magicaldivinatory techniques, and much more Illustrates how the study of divination illuminates thementalities of ancient Greek religions and societies
Download or read book The Laws of Human Nature written by Robert Greene and published by Robert Greene. This book was released on with total page 73 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: SUMMARY: This book is If you’ve ever wondered about human behavior, wonder no more. In The Laws of Human Nature, Greene takes a look at 18 laws that reveal who we are and why we do the things we do. Humans are complex beings, but Greene uses these laws to strip human nature down to its bare bones. Every law that he presents is supported by a real-life historical account, with an insightful twist to drive the point home. As you read the book, don’t be surprised if you get the feeling that everyone you know, including yourself, is described in the book! DISCLAIMER: This is an UNOFFICIAL summary and not the original book. It is designed to record all the key points of the original book.
Download or read book Mantik written by Sarah Iles Johnston and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2005-07-01 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book thoroughly revisits divination as a central phenomenon in the lives of ancient Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians. It collects studies from many periods in Graeco-Roman history, from the Archaic period to the late Roman, and touches on many different areas of this rich topic, including treatments of dice oracles, sortition in both pagan and Christian contexts, the overlap between divination and other interpretive practices in antiquity, the fortunes of independent diviners, the activity of Delphi in ordering relations with the dead, the role of Egyptian cult centers in divinatory practices, and the surreptitious survival of recipes for divination by corpses. It also reflects a ranges of methodologies, drawn from anthropology, history of religions, intellectual history, literary studies, and archaeology, epigraphy, and paleography. It will be of particular interest to scholars and student of ancient Mediterranean religions.
Download or read book Divining the Self written by Velma E. Love and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2015-06-29 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Divining the Self weaves elements of personal narrative, myth, history, and interpretive analysis into a vibrant tapestry that reflects the textured, embodied, and performative nature of scripture and scripturalizing practices. Velma Love examines the Odu—the Yoruba sacred scriptures—along with the accompanying mythology, philosophy, and ritual technologies engaged by African Americans. Drawing from the personal narratives of African American Ifa practitioners along with additional ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Oyotunji African Village, South Carolina, and New York City, Love’s work explores the ways in which an ancient worldview survives in modern times. Divining the Self also takes up the challenge of determining what it means for the scholar of religion to study scripture as both text and performance. This work provides an excellent case study of the sociocultural phenomenon of scripturalizing practices.
Download or read book A Perfect Medium written by Elsa Giovanna Simonetti and published by Leuven University Press. This book was released on 2017-09-25 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An in-depth analysis of oracular divination in Plutarch’s thought Oracular divination was of special concern for Plutarch of Chaeronea (45–120 AD), Platonic philosopher as well as priest at the oracle of Apollo in Delphi. The peculiar nature of Delphic divination as an (im)perfect intermediary between the material and the immaterial world is fathomed in a thorough study of Plutarch’s Delphic dialogues. This in-depth philosophical-conceptual analysis will disclose an original interpretation of oracular divination in Plutarch as interconnected with his psychological and cosmological conceptions. A Perfect Medium? reveals the Delphic temple as a crucial element in Plutarch’s philosophy, as a microcosm reflecting the cosmic dynamics, and as a symbol embodying the relationship between human thirst for knowledge and divine absolute wisdom.
Download or read book The Chain of Things written by Eric Downing and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-04-15 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Chain of Things, Eric Downing shows how the connection between divinatory magic and reading shaped the experience of reading and aesthetics among nineteenth-century realists and modernist thinkers. He explores how writers, artists, and critics such as Gottfried Keller, Theodor Fontane, and Walter Benjamin drew on the ancient practice of divination, connecting the Greek idea of sympathetic magic to the German aesthetic concept of the attunement of mood and atmosphere. Downing deftly traces the genealogical connection between reading and art in classical antiquity, nineteenth-century realism, and modernism, attending to the ways in which the modern re-enchantment of the world—both in nature and human society—consciously engaged ancient practices that aimed at preternatural prediction. Of particular significance to the argument presented in The Chain of Things is how the future figured into the reading of texts during this period, a time when the future as a narrative determinant or article of historical faith was losing its force. Elaborating a new theory of magic as a critical tool, Downing secures crucial links between the governing notions of time, world, the "real," and art.
Download or read book A Companion to World Philosophies written by Eliot Deutsch and published by Wiley-Blackwell. This book was released on 1991-01-16 with total page 608 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This outstanding volume offers students, teachers and general readers a complete introductory survey of the major non-western philosophical traditions.
Download or read book A Brief Introduction to the Study of Human Nature written by Thierry Meynard S.J. and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-08-31 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Called the “Confucius from the West”, the Italian Jesuit Giulio Aleni presented in the final years of the Ming dynasty the biological and sensitive dimensions of the human soul under the form of a fascinating dialogue.
Download or read book Birth of the Symbol written by Peter Struck and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-02-09 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nearly all of us have studied poetry and been taught to look for the symbolic as well as literal meaning of the text. Is this the way the ancients saw poetry? In Birth of the Symbol, Peter Struck explores the ancient Greek literary critics and theorists who invented the idea of the poetic "symbol." The book notes that Aristotle and his followers did not discuss the use of poetic symbolism. Rather, a different group of Greek thinkers--the allegorists--were the first to develop the notion. Struck extensively revisits the work of the great allegorists, which has been underappreciated. He links their interest in symbolism to the importance of divination and magic in ancient times, and he demonstrates how important symbolism became when they thought about religion and philosophy. "They see the whole of great poetic language as deeply figurative," he writes, "with the potential always, even in the most mundane details, to be freighted with hidden messages." Birth of the Symbol offers a new understanding of the role of poetry in the life of ideas in ancient Greece. Moreover, it demonstrates a connection between the way we understand poetry and the way it was understood by important thinkers in ancient times.
Download or read book To Become a God written by Michael J. Puett and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-10-26 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Evidence from Shang oracle bones to memorials submitted to Western Han emperors attests to a long-lasting debate in early China over the proper relationship between humans and gods. One pole of the debate saw the human and divine realms as separate and agonistic and encouraged divination to determine the will of the gods and sacrifices to appease and influence them. The opposite pole saw the two realms as related and claimed that humans could achieve divinity and thus control the cosmos. This wide-ranging book reconstructs this debate and places within their contemporary contexts the rival claims concerning the nature of the cosmos and the spirits, the proper demarcation between the human and the divine realms, and the types of power that humans and spirits can exercise. It is often claimed that the worldview of early China was unproblematically monistic and that hence China had avoided the tensions between gods and humans found in the West. By treating the issues of cosmology, sacrifice, and self-divinization in a historical and comparative framework that attends to the contemporary significance of specific arguments, Michael J. Puett shows that the basic cosmological assumptions of ancient China were the subject of far more debate than is generally thought.
Download or read book Divination and Prediction in Early China and Ancient Greece written by Lisa Raphals and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-10-17 with total page 499 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book compares the intellectual and social history and past and present contexts of mantic practices (divination) in Chinese and Greek antiquity.
Download or read book Wild Mind written by Bill Plotkin and published by New World Library. This book was released on 2013 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Depth psychologist Plotkin describes himself as a "psychologist gone wild." As a cultural visionary, author, and wilderness guide, he's been breaking trail for decades. Plotkin's revisioning of psychology invites readers into a conscious and embodied relationship with the more-than-human world.
Download or read book Natural Right and History written by Leo Strauss and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2013-12-27 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this classic work, Leo Strauss examines the problem of natural right and argues that there is a firm foundation in reality for the distinction between right and wrong in ethics and politics. On the centenary of Strauss's birth, and the fiftieth anniversary of the Walgreen Lectures which spawned the work, Natural Right and History remains as controversial and essential as ever. "Strauss . . . makes a significant contribution towards an understanding of the intellectual crisis in which we find ourselves . . . [and] brings to his task an admirable scholarship and a brilliant, incisive mind."—John H. Hallowell, American Political Science Review Leo Strauss (1899-1973) was the Robert Maynard Hutchins Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in Political Science at the University of Chicago.
Download or read book Signs Wonders and Gifts written by Jennifer Eyl and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In much of the scholarship on Paul, activities such as speaking in tongues, prophecy, and miracle healings are either ignored or treated as singular occurrences. Typically, these practices are categorized in such a way that shields Paul and his followers from the influence of so-called paganism. In Signs, Wonders, and Gifts, Jennifer Eyl masterfully argues that Paul did, in fact, engage in range of divinatory and wonder-working practices that were widely recognized and accepted across the ancient Mediterranean. Eyl redescribes, reclassifies, and recontextualizes Paul's repertoire vis- -vis such widespread, similar practices. Situating these activities within the larger framework of reciprocity that dominated human-divine relationships in antiquity, she demonstrates that divine powers and divine communication were bestowed as benefactions toward Paul and his gentile followers in proportion to their faithfulness and loyalty.
