Download or read book Human Nature Ritual and History written by Antonio S. Cua and published by CUA Press. This book was released on 2005-03 with total page 419 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this volume, distinguished philosopher Antonio S. Cua offers a collection of original studies on Xunzi, a leading classical Confucian thinker, and on other aspects of Chinese philosophy.
Download or read book Exploring Human Nature written by Jana Lemke and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work presents a reflexive mixed methods study of young adults' experiences of solo time in the wilderness and the impact on these individuals' attitudes and values in the face of global change.
Download or read book Divination and Human Nature written by Peter T. 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 In Nature s Honor written by Patricia Montley and published by Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations. This book was released on 2005 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Nature's Honor explores the eight solar holidays that mark the turning of the Wheel of the Year. Each chapter begins with a history of the holiday--the ways in which it has been celebrated from ancient to modern times, its relationship to other religious and secular celebrations and its cultural and mythological foundations. This history is followed by recommendations for specific activities to celebrate the season that individuals, families or small groups can enjoy. The chapters conclude with formal rituals suitable for use in larger faith communities. These include scripted narration, songs, dramatic enactments, litanies of seasonal blessings, readings from poetry and mythology and suggestions for ceremonial food. In Nature's Honor reconnects the modern spiritual seeker with the earth-centered practices of our ancestors. This work explores the seasonal rituals that celebrate the earth and our connection to it--which is not just physical but profoundly spiritual. FROM THE AUTHOR From the Authorz In writing this book, I discovered the most important theme running through the history of rituals related to the earth's seasons is renewal. The wheel turns and the old season gives way to the new, the old year to the new, the old life to the new. Each planting of seeds promises new possibilities. Each harvest brings sustenance for yet another year. Each fallow time regenerates the life of the soil. The sun deities retreat and return. The grain goddesses are lost and restored. The vegetation gods die and rise again. The cycle of life goes on and on, birth after death after birth. Perhaps what all the rituals celebrate is this ongoing-ness of life: the miraculous natural world that makes it possible and our abiding connection to it. For the ancients, the interdependence was clear. When the people fasted on the eve of a new season's beginning, they purified not just their own bodies, but the land itself. The fires that encouraged the fecundity of the land also made its people fertile. For us moderns distanced from the earth by technology, the interdependence is not as clear. And we are paying the price: in polluted air and water, in soil erosion, in deforestation, in global warming. How different the condition of the planet might be if we allowed ourselves to be renewed at each turning of the wheel of the year, if we took the time periodically to celebrate the beauty and bounty of nature.
Download or read book This Human Nature written by Charles Duff and published by . This book was released on 1930 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Culture and Human Nature written by Melford Elliott Spiro and published by Transaction Publishers. This book was released on with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume illustrates Melford Spiro's explorations of key relationships among culture, society, and human nature. He addresses such fundamental issues as the limitations of cultural relativism, the problem of explanation in the social sciences, and the importance of a comparative approach to the study of social and cultural systems. Spiro believes that deep motivational and cognitive structures underlie human behavior. He argues that these structures can be explained by the evolutionary history of our species and by social experience.
Download or read book Xunzi written by and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2003-05-21 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Xunzi asserted that the original nature of man is evil, differing on this point from Mencius, his famous predecessor in the Confucian school. In the most complete, well-ordered philosophical system of his day, Xunzi advocated the counteraction of man's evil through self-improvement, the pursuit of learning, the avoidance of obsession, and observance of ritual in life. Readers familiar with Xunzi's work will find that Burton Watson's lucid translation breathes new life into this classic. Those new to Xunzi will find his ideas on government, language, and order and safety in society surprisingly close to concerns of our own age.
Download or read book Xunzi written by Xunzi and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2016-03-22 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first complete, one-volume English translation of the ancient Chinese text Xunzi, one of the most extensive, sophisticated, and elegant works in the tradition of Confucian thought. Through essays, poetry, dialogues, and anecdotes, the Xunzi presents a more systematic vision of the Confucian ideal than the fragmented sayings of Confucius and Mencius, articulating a Confucian perspective on ethics, politics, warfare, language, psychology, human nature, ritual, and music, among other topics. Aimed at general readers and students of Chinese thought, Eric Hutton’s translation makes the full text of this important work more accessible in English than ever before. This edition features an introduction, a timeline of early Chinese history, a list of important names and terms, cross-references, explanatory notes, a bibliography, and an index.
Download or read book Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity written by Roy A. Rappaport and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1999-03-25 with total page 566 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Roy Rappaport argues that religion is central to the continuing evolution of life, although it has been been displaced from its original position of intellectual authority by the rise of modern science. His book, which could be construed as in some degree religious as well as about religion, insists that religion can and must be reconciled with science. Combining adaptive and cognitive approaches to the study of humankind, he mounts a comprehensive analysis of religion's evolutionary significance, seeing it as co-extensive with the invention of language and hence of culture as we know it. At the same time he assembles the fullest study yet of religion's main component, ritual, which constructs the conceptions which we take to be religious and has been central in the making of humanity's adaptation. The text amounts to a manual for effective ritual, illustrated by examples drawn from anthropology, history, philosophy, comparative religion, and elsewhere.
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 Historical Records written by Sima Qian and published by DeepLogic. This book was released on 2019-02-02 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 史记 "Historical Records" was written by Sima Qian, the Western Han Dynasty historian. The biographical history book is the first biographical general history in China, documented on to the ancient legend of the Yellow Emperor era, down to the Han Dynasty between the beginning four years, a total of 3,000 years of history. In 104 B.C., Sima Qian began the creation of a history book called " Tai Shi Gong Shu " which was later called “史记”, or "Historical Records". It took 14 years before and after to complete. The "Historical Records" book includes twelve Origins Volumes recording the emperor's political achievements (“十二本纪”), thirty Family Volumes remembering the vassal state and dynasty princes (“三十世家”), honors and dying, Seventy Fame Verses remembering the deeds of important people (“七十列传”)，ten Tables (chronology of major events, “十表”), eight Books remembering various rules and regulations, ritual, music, temperament, calendar, astronomy, meditation, water conservancy, financial use (“八书”), a total of 130 articles, 520 thousand words. The book is translation of full text of Historical Records, covering all contents aforementioned.
Download or read book Human Universals written by Donald Brown and published by McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages. This book was released on 1991-01-01 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores physical and behavioral characteristics that can be considered universal among all cultures, all people. It presents cases demonstrating universals, looks at the history of the study of universals, and presents an interesting study of a hypothetical tribe, The Universal People.
Download or read book Ritual A Very Short Introduction written by Barry Stephenson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015-01-28 with total page 143 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ritual is part of what it means to be human. Like sports, music, and drama, ritual defines and enriches culture, putting those who practice it in touch with sources of value and meaning larger than themselves. Ritual is unavoidable, yet it holds a place in modern life that is decidedly ambiguous. What is ritual? What does it do? Is it useful? What are the various kinds of ritual? Is ritual tradition bound and conservative or innovative and transformational? Alongside description of a number of specific rites, this Very Short Introduction explores ritual from both theoretical and historical perspectives. Barry Stephenson focuses on the places where ritual touches everyday life: in politics and power; moments of transformation in the life cycle; as performance and embodiment. He also discusses the boundaries of ritual, and how and why certain behaviors have been studied as ritual while others have not. Stephenson shows how ritual is an important vehicle for group and identity formation; how it generates and transmits beliefs and values; how it can be used to exploit and oppress; and how it has served as a touchstone for thinking about cultural origins and historical change. Encompassing the breadth and depth of modern ritual studies, Barry Stephenson's Very Short Introduction also develops a narrative of ritual's place in social and cultural life. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
Download or read book On Human Nature written by Edward O. Wilson and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2004-10-18 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Preface 1 Dilemma 2 Heredity 3 Development 4 Emergence 5 Aggression 6 Sex 7 Altruism 8 Religion 9 Hope Glossary Notes Index.
Download or read book The Varieties of Religious Experience written by William James and published by The Floating Press. This book was released on 2009-01-01 with total page 824 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Harvard psychologist and philosopher William James' The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature explores the nature of religion and, in James' observation, its divorce from science when studied academically. After publication in 1902 it quickly became a canonical text of philosophy and psychology, remaining in print through the entire century. "Scientific theories are organically conditioned just as much as religious emotions are; and if we only knew the facts intimately enough, we should doubtless see 'the liver' determining the dicta of the sturdy atheist as decisively as it does those of the Methodist under conviction anxious about his soul. When it alters in one way the blood that percolates it, we get the Methodist, when in another way, we get the atheist form of mind."
Download or read book Human Cultures through the Scientific Lens written by Pascal Boyer and published by Open Book Publishers. This book was released on 2021-07-09 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume brings together a collection of seven articles previously published by the author, with a new introduction reframing the articles in the context of past and present questions in anthropology, psychology and human evolution. It promotes the perspective of ‘integrated’ social science, in which social science questions are addressed in a deliberately eclectic manner, combining results and models from evolutionary biology, experimental psychology, economics, anthropology and history. It thus constitutes a welcome contribution to a gradually emerging approach to social science based on E. O. Wilson’s concept of ‘consilience’. Human Cultures through the Scientific Lens spans a wide range of topics, from an examination of ritual behaviour, integrating neuro-science, ethology and anthropology to explain why humans engage in ritual actions (both cultural and individual), to the motivation of conflicts between groups. As such, the collection gives readers a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the applications of an evolutionary paradigm in the social sciences. This volume will be a useful resource for scholars and students in the social sciences (particularly psychology, anthropology, evolutionary biology and the political sciences), as well as a general readership interested in the social sciences.
Download or read book Ritual Sacrifice written by Brenda Ralph Lewis and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2007-01-15 with total page 131 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The principle of sacrifice is as old as human life itself. This book provides an overview of sacrificial practices around the world since prehistoric times. It also examines the reasons behind these rituals, and in the case of human sacrifice an attempt is made to understand the mentality of the 'victims' who often willingly went to their deaths.
