Download or read book Perfecting Friendship written by Ivy Schweitzer and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2007-09-06 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contemporary notions of friendship regularly place it in the private sphere, associated with feminized forms of sympathy and affection. As Ivy Schweitzer explains, however, this perception leads to a misunderstanding of American history. In an exploration of early American literature and culture, Schweitzer uncovers friendships built on a classical model that is both public and political in nature. Schweitzer begins with Aristotle's ideal of "perfect" friendship that positions freely chosen relationships among equals as the highest realization of ethical, social, and political bonds. Evidence in works by John Winthrop, Hannah Foster, James Fenimore Cooper, and Catharine Sedgwick confirms that this classical model shaped early American concepts of friendship and, thus, democracy. Schweitzer argues that recognizing the centrality of friendship as a cultural institution is critical to understanding the rationales for consolidating power among white males in the young nation. She also demonstrates how women, nonelite groups, and minorities have appropriated and redefined the discourse of perfect friendship, making equality its result rather than its requirement. By recovering the public nature of friendship, Schweitzer establishes discourse about affection and affiliation as a central component of American identity and democratic community.
Download or read book Made for Friendship written by Drew Hunter and published by Crossway. This book was released on 2018-09-20 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: God made you for friendship. Friendship is one of the deepest pleasures of life. But in our busy, fast-paced, mobile world, we've lost this rich view of friendship and instead settled for shallow acquaintances based on little more than similar tastes or shared interests. Helping us recapture a vision of true friendship, pastor Drew Hunter explores God's design for friendship and what it really looks like in practice—giving us practical advice to cultivate the kinds of true friendships that lead to true and life-giving joy.
Download or read book Mom Life Perfection Pending written by Meredith Ethington and published by Absolute Love Publishing. This book was released on 2018-02-27 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Out-parented at PTA? Out-liked on social media? Wondering how your best friend from high school’s kids are always color-coordinated, angelic, and beaming from every photo, while your kids look more like feral monkeys? It’s okay. Imperfection is the new perfection! Join Meredith Ethington, “one of the funniest parents on Facebook,” according to Today.com, as she relates encouraging stories of real-mom life in her debut parenting humor book, Mom Life: Perfection Pending. Whether you’re buried in piles of laundry, packing your 50th sack lunch for the week, or almost making it out the door in time for school, you’ll laugh along with stories of what real-mom life is like—and realize that sometimes simply making it through the day is good enough. An uplifting yet real look at all that is expected of moms in the 21st century, Mom Life: Perfection Pending is so relatable you’ll find yourself saying, “I guess I’m doing okay after all.”
Download or read book Perfecting Justice in Rawls Habermas and Honneth written by Miriam Bankovsky and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2012-02-23 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this exciting new work, Miriam Bankovsky shows how the pursuit of justice requires two orientations. The first is a practical commitment to the possibility of justice, which is the clear starting point for the broadly constructive theories of Rawls, Habermas and Honneth. Indeed, if justice were not possible, it would be difficult to see why it is worthwhile for human beings to live on this earth. However, a second orientation qualifies the first. It can be expressed as a deconstructive attentiveness to the impossibility of determining justice's content. This impossibility results from the tension between the appeal for individual consideration and the appeal for impartiality, demands that Derrida believes our historical concept of justice includes. Framed by these two orientations, this ambitious book explores the promise and shortcomings of the constructive theories. Attentive to concrete experiences of injustice that these thinkers tend to overlook, Bankovsky provocatively challenges Rawls' account of civil disobedience, Habermas' defence of rational consensus, and Honneth's ideal of mutual recognition, providing new insights into deconstruction's relevance for contemporary theories of justice.
Download or read book The Perfect Friend written by Barbara Copperthwaite and published by Bookouture. This book was released on 2018-07-05 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Bosom Friends written by Thomas J. Balcerski and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-08-02 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The friendship of the bachelor politicians James Buchanan (1791-1868) of Pennsylvania and William Rufus King (1786-1853) of Alabama has excited much speculation through the years. Why did neither marry? Might they have been gay? Or was their relationship a nineteenth-century version of the modern-day "bromance"? In Bosom Friends: The Intimate World of James Buchanan and William Rufus King, Thomas J. Balcerski explores the lives of these two politicians and discovers one of the most significant collaborations in American political history. He traces the parallels in the men's personal and professional lives before elected office, including their failed romantic courtships and the stories they told about them. Unlikely companions from the start, they lived together as congressional messmates in a Washington, DC, boardinghouse and became close confidantes. Around the nation's capital, the men were mocked for their effeminacy and perhaps their sexuality, and they were likened to Siamese twins. Over time, their intimate friendship blossomed into a significant cross-sectional political partnership. Balcerski examines Buchanan's and King's contributions to the Jacksonian political agenda, manifest destiny, and the increasingly divisive debates over slavery, while contesting interpretations that the men lacked political principles and deserved blame for the breakdown of the union. He closely narrates each man's rise to national prominence, as William Rufus King was elected vice-president in 1852 and James Buchanan the nation's fifteenth president in 1856, despite the political gossip that circulated about them. While exploring a same-sex relationship that powerfully shaped national events in the antebellum era, Bosom Friends demonstrates that intimate male friendships among politicians were--and continue to be--an important part of success in American politics.
Download or read book Perfecting Human Actions written by John Michael Rziha and published by CUA Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the last few centuries, a practical dichotomy between God and humans has developed within moral theory. As a result, moral theory tends to focus only on humans where human autonomy is foundational or only on God where divine commands capriciously rule. However, the moral theology of Thomas Aquinas overcomes this dichotomy. For Thomas, humans reach their perfection by participating in God's wisdom and love. Perfecting Human Actions explores the ways humans participate in eternal law--God's wisdom that guides and moves all things to their proper action. The book begins with a thoughtful examination of the philosophic recovery of the notion of participation in Thomistic metaphysics. It then explains Thomas's theological understanding of the notion of participation to show how humans are related to God. It is discovered that when performing human actions, humans participate in the eternal law in two ways: as moved and governed by it, and cognitively. In reference to participation as moved and governed, humans are directed by God to their proper end of eternal happiness. This mode of participation can be increased by perfecting the natural inclinations through virtue, grace, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. In reference to cognitive participation, humans as rational creatures can know their proper end and how to attain it. Through this knowledge of moral truths, the intellect participates in the eternal law. Cognitive participation is perfected by the intellectual virtues (especially faith) and the gifts of the Holy Spirit (especially wisdom). The book concludes by showing how the notion of human participation in the eternal law is a much better foundation for moral theory than the contemporary notion of autonomy. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: John Rziha is associate professor of theology at Benedictine College. PRAISE FOR THE BOOK: " A] competent and indeed masterful study. . . . Rziha's book is to be welcomed as not just an important, but indeed an overdue contribution to the contemporary recovery of Aquinas's moral theory. More importantly, this study is of surpassing importance in advancing the correct understanding of the relationship between human freedom and natural law. . . . Rziha's lucidly written and well-documented study displays all the characteristics of a competent and learned interpretation of the thought of the doctor communis according to the highest standards of current Aquinas scholarship."--Reinhard Hutter, Thomist "Rziha explores at length the two modes by which human participate in God's eternal law: as moved and governed by it and as having knowledge of it. . . . T]his book proves to be something of a comprehensive course in Thomistic thought. This project is supported by extensive and meticulous footnote reverences to texts of Aquinas." --Janine Marie Idziak, Speculum
Download or read book Bond of Perfection written by Wendy M. Wright and published by DeSales. This book was released on 2001 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Question of God s Perfection written by Yoram Hazony and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-11-26 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Question of God’s Perfection brings together leading scholars from the Jewish and Christian traditions to critically examine the theology of perfect being in light of the Hebrew Bible and classical rabbinic sources.
Download or read book A Spirituality of Perfection written by Patrick J. Hartin and published by Liturgical Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout this century the Letter of James has been viewed consistently as a disjointed set of instructions. Father Hartin deviates radically from this approach. He shows that the "call for perfection" provides a unifying meaning for the letter. Examining the concept of perfection against the background of the Greco-Roman world, the Old Testament, and the Septuagint, the author shows that perfection provides a key to define the spirituality of the Letter of James. It offers an understanding of God and of the way one is called "to be in the world." Hartin adopts a fresh approach toward understanding the categories of wisdom, eschatology, and apocalyptic as they illuminate the letter's advice.
Download or read book On Friendship written by Michel de Montaigne and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2005-09-06 with total page 84 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the 100-part Penguin Great Ideas series comes a rumination on relationships, courtesy of one of the most influential French Renaissance philosophers. Michel de Montaigne was the originator of the modern essay form; in these diverse pieces he expresses his views on friendship, contemplates the idea that man is no different from any animal, argues that all cultures should be respected, and attempts, by an exploration of himself, to understand the nature of humanity. Penguin Great Ideas: Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves—and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war, and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked, and comforted. They have enriched lives—and destroyed them. Now Penguin Great Ideas brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals, and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are. Other titles in the series include Niccolò Machiavelli's The Prince, Thomas Paine's Common Sense, and Charles Darwin's On Natural Selection.
Download or read book The Impossibility of Perfection written by Michael Slote and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-05-01 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most people think that the difficulty of balancing career and personal/family relationships is the fault of present-day society or is due to their own inadequacies. But in this major new book, eminent moral philosopher Michael Slote argues that the difficulty runs much deeper, that it is due to the essential nature of the divergent goods involved in this kind of choice. He shows more generally that perfect human happiness and perfect virtue are impossible in principle, a view originally enunciated by Isaiah Berlin, but much more thoroughly and synoptically defended here than ever before. Ancient Greek and modern-day Enlightenment thought typically assumed that perfection was possible, and this is also true of Romanticism and of most recent ethical theory. But if, as Slote maintains, imperfection is inevitable, then our inherited categories of virtue and personal good are far too limited and unqualified to allow us to understand and cope with the richer and more complex life that characterizes today's world. And The Impossibility of Perfection argues in particular that we need some new notions, new distinctions, and even new philosophical methods in order to distill some of the ethical insights of recent feminist thought and arrive at a fuller and more realistic picture of ethical phenomena.
Download or read book Poetic Relations written by Constance M. Furey and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2017-06-05 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the relationship between our isolated and our social selves, between aloneness and interconnection? Constance M. Furey probes this question through a suggestive literary tradition: early Protestant poems in which a single speaker describes a solitary search for God. As Furey demonstrates, John Donne, George Herbert, Anne Bradstreet, and others describe inner lives that are surprisingly crowded, teeming with human as well as divine companions. The same early modern writers who bequeathed to us the modern distinction between self and society reveal here a different way of thinking about selfhood altogether. For them, she argues, the self is neither alone nor universally connected, but is forever interactive and dynamically constituted by specific relationships. By means of an analysis equally attentive to theological ideas, social conventions, and poetic form, Furey reveals how poets who understand introspection as a relational act, and poetry itself as a form ideally suited to crafting a relational self, offer us new ways of thinking about selfhood today—and a resource for reimagining both secular and religious ways of being in the world.
Download or read book How to Win Friends and Influence People written by and published by ببلومانيا للنشر والتوزيع. This book was released on 2024-02-17 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: You can go after the job you want…and get it! You can take the job you have…and improve it! You can take any situation you’re in…and make it work for you! Since its release in 1936, How to Win Friends and Influence People has sold more than 30 million copies. Dale Carnegie’s first book is a timeless bestseller, packed with rock-solid advice that has carried thousands of now famous people up the ladder of success in their business and personal lives. As relevant as ever before, Dale Carnegie’s principles endure, and will help you achieve your maximum potential in the complex and competitive modern age. Learn the six ways to make people like you, the twelve ways to win people to your way of thinking, and the nine ways to change people without arousing resentment.
Download or read book Sympathetic Puritans written by Abram Van Engen and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015-02-02 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Revising dominant accounts of Puritanism and challenging the literary history of sentimentalism, Sympathetic Puritans argues that a Calvinist theology of sympathy shaped the politics, religion, rhetoric, and literature of early New England. Scholars have often understood and presented sentimentalism as a direct challenge to stern and stoic Puritan forebears; the standard history traces a cult of sensibility back to moral sense philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment, not Puritan New England. Abram C. Van Engen has unearthed pervasive evidence of sympathy in a large archive of Puritan sermons, treatises, tracts, poems, journals, histories, and captivity narratives. He demonstrates how two types of sympathy -- the active command to fellow-feel (a duty), as well as the passive sign that could indicate salvation (a discovery) -- permeated Puritan society and came to define the very boundaries of English culture, affecting conceptions of community, relations with Native Americans, and the development of American literature. Van Engen re-examines the Antinomian Controversy, conversion narratives, transatlantic relations, Puritan missions, Mary Rowlandson's captivity narrative -- and Puritan culture more generally -- through the lens of sympathy. Demonstrating and explicating a Calvinist theology of sympathy in seventeenth-century New England, the book reveals the religious history of a concept that has previously been associated with more secular roots.
Download or read book Perfection s Therapy written by Mitchell B. Merback and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2018-02-09 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A deft reinterpretation of the most zealously interpreted picture in the Western canon as a therapeutic artifact. Albrecht Dürer's famous portrayal of creative effort in paralysis, the unsurpassed masterpiece of copperplate engraving titled Melencolia I, has stood for centuries as a pictorial summa of knowledge about the melancholic temperament, a dense allegory of the limits of earthbound arts and sciences and the impossibility of attaining perfection. Dubbed the “image of images” for being the most zealously interpreted picture in the Western canon, Melencolia I also presides over the origins of modern iconology, art history's own science of meaning. Yet we are left with a clutter of mutually contradictory theories, a historiographic ruin that confirms the mood of its object. In Perfection's Therapy, Mitchell Merback reopens the case file and argues for a hidden intentionality in Melencolia's opacity, its structural “chaos,” and its resistance to allegorical closure. That intentionality, he argues, points toward a fascinating possibility never before considered: that Dürer's masterpiece is not only an arresting diagnosis of melancholic distress, but an innovative instrument for its undoing. Merback deftly resituates Dürer's image within the long history of the therapeutic artifact. Placing Dürer's therapeutic project in dialogue with that of humanism's founder, Francesco Petrarch, Merback also unearths Dürer's ambition to act as a physician of the soul. Celebrated as the "Apelles of the black line" in his own day, and ever since as Germany's first Renaissance painter-theorist, the Dürer we encounter here is also the first modern Christian artist, addressing himself to the distress of souls, including his own. Melencolia thus emerges as a key reference point in a venture of spiritual-ethical therapy, a work designed to exercise the mind, restore the body's equilibrium, and help in getting on with the undertaking of perfection.
