Download or read book Schools of Asceticism written by Lutz F. Kaelber and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2010-11-01 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the Weberian theme of religious asceticism in the context of medieval religion, concentrating on the Cathars and Waldensians in southern France. Analyzes how the ideology and social organization of religious groups shaped rational ascetic conduct of their members and how the different forms of asceticism affected cultural and economic life, combining a sociological approach to the analysis of medieval history with an original analysis of primary sources. For scholars of comparative historical and theoretical sociology, medieval history, and religious studies. Paper edition (unseen), $19.95. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Download or read book Asceticism in Early Taoist Religion written by Stephen Eskildsen and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1998-10-01 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using a wide variety of original sources, this book examines how and why early Taoists carried out such ascetic practices as fasting, celibacy, sleep deprivation, and wilderness seclusion.

Download or read book Asceticism and Its Critics written by Oliver Freiberger and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2006-10-19 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scholars of religion have always been fascinated by asceticism. Some have even regarded this radical way of life-- the withdrawal from the world, combined with practices that seriously affect basic bodily needs, up to extreme forms of self-mortification --as the ultimate form of a true religious quest. This view is rooted in hagiographic descriptions of prominent ascetics and in other literary accounts that praise the ascetic life-style. Scholars have often overlooked, however, that in the history of religions ascetic beliefs and practices have also been strongly criticized, by followers of the same religious tradition as well as by outsiders. The respective sources provide sufficient evidence of such critical strands but surprisingly as yet no attempt has been made to analyze this criticism of asceticism systematically. This book is a first attempt of filling this gap. Ten studies present cases from both Asian and European traditions: classical and medieval Hinduism, early and contemporary Buddhism in South and East Asia, European antiquity, early and medieval Christianity, and 19th/20th century Aryan religion. Focusing on the critics of asceticism, their motives, their arguments, and the targets of their critique, these studies provide a broad range of issues for comparison. They suggest that the critique of asceticism is based on a worldview differing from and competing with the ascetic worldview, often in one and the same historical context. The book demonstrates that examining the critics of asceticism helps understand better the complexity of religious traditions and their cultural contexts. The comparative analysis, moreover, shows that the criticism of asceticism reflects a religious worldview as significant and widespread in the history of religions as asceticism itself is.

Download or read book Western Asceticism written by Owen Chadwick and published by Westminster John Knox Press. This book was released on 1881 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Students of church history and the monastic ascetic life will find this volume of much interest. Contained are three important documents of the early Christian Church: The Sayings of the Fathers, The Conferences of Cassian, and The Rule of Saint Benedict.Long recognized for the quality of its translations, introductions, explanatory notes, and...

Download or read book The Hellenic Origins of Christian Asceticism written by Joseph Ward Swain and published by . This book was released on 1916 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Indian Asceticism written by Carl Olson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout the history of Indian religions, the ascetic figure is most closely identified with power. A by-product of the ascetic path, power is displayed in the ability to fly, walk on water or through dense objects, read minds, discern the former lives of others, see into the future, harm others, or simply levitate one's body. These tales give rise to questions about how power and violence are related to the phenomenon of play. Indian Asceticism focuses on the powers exhibited by ascetics of India from ancient to modern time. Carl Olson discusses the erotic, the demonic, the comic, and the miraculous forms of play and their connections to power and violence. He focuses on Hinduism, but evidence is also presented from Buddhism and Jainism, suggesting that the subject matter of this book pervades India's major indigenous religious traditions. The book includes a look at the extent to which findings in cognitive science can add to our understanding of these various powers; Olson argues that violence is built into the practice of the ascetic. Indian Asceticism culminates with an attempt to rethink the nature of power in a way that does justice to the literary evidence from Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain sources.

Download or read book The Ideals of Asceticism written by Oscar Hardman and published by London : Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. This book was released on 1921 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Beyond Pleasure written by Evert Peeters and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2011-04-01 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Asceticism, so it is argued in this volume, is a modern category. The ubiquitous cult of the body, of fitness and diet equally evokes the ongoing success of ascetic practices and beliefs. Nostalgic memories of hardship and discipline in the army, youth movements or boarding schools remain as present as the fashionable irritation with the presumed modern-day laziness. In the very texture of contemporary culture, age-old asceticism proves to be remarkably alive. Old ascetic forms were remoulded to serve modern desires for personal authenticity, an authenticity that disconnected asceticism in the course of the nineteenth century from two traditions that had underpinned it since classical antiquity: the public, republican austerity of antiquity and the private, religious asceticism of Christianity. Exploring various aspects such as the history of the body, of aesthetics, science, and social thought in several European countries (Great Britain, France, Germany, Austria and Belgium), the authors show that modern asceticism remains a deeply ambivalent category. Apart from self-realisation, classical and religious examples continue to haunt the ascetic mind.

Download or read book The Religion of Existence written by Noreen Khawaja and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2016-12-02 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What was existentialism? At its heart, Noreen Khawaja argues, existentialism was an effort to translate Protestant piety into a secular philosophy. While there have been many attempts to define existentialism from within as a coherent philosophical program and even as a movement, Khawaja s book is the first study of existentialism from the standpoint of intellectual history and the first to look systematically at the role that Christianity played in the development of existential thought. Focusing on Soren Kierkegaard, Martin Heidegger, and Jean-Paul Sartre, Khawaja illuminates the key moments in existentialism s reconstruction of Protestant piety within the confines of secular philosophy. Heidegger once described his work as an exercise in the piety of thinking. Khawaja s book shows the historical and systematic truth behind this metaphor. Notwithstanding Heidegger, thinking has not always been a pious act. But for a certain group of European intellectuals in the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it became so. "The Religion of Existence "will appeal to scholars of modern Christianity, philosophers, and historians of European philosophy, as well as those engaged with the theoretical and historical problems of secular and post-secular modernity. "

Download or read book Asceticism written by Vincent L. Wimbush and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2002-05-23 with total page 678 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From meditation and fasting to celibacy and anchoritism, the ascetic impulse has been an enduring and complex phenomenon throughout history. Offering a sweeping view of this elusive and controversial aspect of religious life and culture, Asceticism looks at the ascetic impulse from a unique vantage point. Cross-cultural, cross-religious, and multidisciplinary in nature, these essays provide a broad historical and comparative perspective on asceticism--a subject rarely studied outside the context of individual religious traditions. The work represents the input of more than forty preeminent scholars in a wide range of fields and disciplines, and analyzes asceticism from antiquity to the present in European, Near Eastern, African, Asian, and North American settings. Asceticism is organized around four major themes that cut across religious traditions: origins and meanings of asceticism, which explores the motivations and impulses behind ascetic behaviors; hermeneutics of asceticism, which looks at texts and rhetorics and their presuppositions; aesthetics of asceticism, which documents responses evoked by ascetic impulses and practices, as well as the arts of ascetic practices themselves; and politics of asceticism, which analyzes the power dynamics of asceticism, especially as regards gender, cultural, and ethnic differences. Critical responses to the major papers ensure the focus upon the themes and unify the discussion. Two general addresses on broad philosophical and historical-interpretive issues suggest the importance of the subject of asceticism for wide-ranging but serious cultural-critical discussions. An Appendix, Ascetica Miscellanea, includes six short papers on provocative topics not related to the four major themes, and a panel discussion on the practices and meanings of asceticism in contemporary religious life and culture. A selected bibliography and an index are also included. The only comprehensive reference work on asceticism with a multicultural, multireligious, and multidisciplinary perspective, Asceticism offers a model not only for an understanding of a most important dimension of religious life, but also for future interdisciplinary study in general.

Download or read book Asceticism in the Graeco Roman World written by Richard Damian Finn and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-07-02 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pagan asceticism: cultic and contemplative purity -- Asceticism in Hellenistic and Rabbinic Judaism -- Christian asceticism before Origen -- Origen and his ascetic legacy -- Cavemen, cenobites, and clerics.

Download or read book Ascetic Practices in Japanese Religion written by Tullio Federico Lobetti and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-09-11 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ascetic practices are a common feature of religion in Japan, practiced by different religious traditions. This book looks at these ascetic practices in an inter-sectarian and inter-doctrinal fashion, in order to highlight the underlying themes common to all forms of asceticism. It does so by employing a multidisciplinary methodology, which integrates participant fieldwork – the author himself engaged extensively in ascetic practices – with a hermeneutical interpretation of the body as the primary locus of transmission of the ascetic ‘embodied tradition’. By unlocking this ‘bodily data’, the book unveils the human body as the main tool and text of ascetic practice. This book includes discussion of the many extraordinary rituals practiced by Japanese ascetics.

Download or read book Thoreau s Religion written by Alda Balthrop-Lewis and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-01-21 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Boldly reconfigures Walden for contemporary ethics and politics by recovering Thoreau's theological vision of environmental justice.

Download or read book Sites of the Ascetic Self written by Niki Kasumi Clements and published by University of Notre Dame Pess. This book was released on 2020-05-31 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sites of the Ascetic Self reconsiders contemporary debates about ethics and subjectivity in an extended engagement with the works of John Cassian (ca. 360–ca. 435), whose stories of extreme asceticism and transformative religious experience by desert elders helped to establish Christian monastic forms of life. Cassian’s late ancient texts, written in the context of social, cultural, political, doctrinal, and environmental change, contribute to an ethics for fractured selves in uncertain times. In response to this environment, Cassian’s practical asceticism provides a uniquely frank picture of human struggle in a world of contingency while also affirming human agency in ways that signaled a challenge to followers of his contemporary, Augustine of Hippo. Niki Kasumi Clements brings these historical and textual analyses of Cassian’s monastic works into conversation with contemporary debates at the intersection of the philosophy of religion and queer and feminist theories. Rather than focusing on interiority and renunciation of self, as scholars such as Michel Foucault read Cassian, Clements analyzes Cassian’s texts by foregrounding practices of the body, the emotions, and the community. By focusing on lived experience in the practical ethics of Cassian, Clements demonstrates the importance of analyzing constructions of ethics in terms of cultivation alongside critical constructions of power. By challenging modern assumptions about Cassian’s asceticism, Sites of the Ascetic Self contributes to questions of ethics, subjectivity, and agency in the study of religion today.

Download or read book The New Asceticism written by Sarah Coakley and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-11-05 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Each chapter of The New Asceticism concentrates on a contentious issue in contemporary theology - the role of women in the churches, homosexuality and the priesthood, celibacy and the future of Christian asceticism - in an original thesis about the nature of desire which may start to heal many contemporary wounds. Professor Coakley is as familiar with the Bible and the Early Fathers as she is with the writings of Freud and Jung, and she draws heavily on Gregory of Nyssa's theology of desire in what she proposes. She points the way through the false modern alternatives of repression and libertinism, agape and eros, recovering a way in which desire can be freed from associations with promiscuity and disorder, and forging a new ascetical vision founded in the disciplines of prayer and attention.

Download or read book Asceticism of the Mind written by Inbar Graiver and published by Studies and Texts. This book was released on 2021-11-22 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study explores the strategies used by Christian ascetics in the Egyptian, Gazan, and Sinaitic monastic traditions of late antiquity, drawing on contemporary cognitive and neuroscientific research to underscore the beneficial potential and self-formative role of the monastic system of mental training, confuting older views that emphasized the negative and repressive aspects of asceticism. At the same time, it sheds new light on the challenges that ascetics encountered in their attempts to transform themselves, lending insight into aspects of their daily lives. The use of both historical and cognitive perspectives allows Asceticism of the Mind to open new ways of exploring asceticism and Christian monasticism.

Download or read book Clothed in the Body written by Dr Hannah Hunt and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2012-08-01 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hunt examines the apparent paradox that Jesus' earthly existence and post resurrection appearances are experienced through consummately physical actions and attributes yet some ascetics within the Christian tradition appear to seek to deny the value of the human body, to find it deadening of spiritual life. Hunt considers why the Christian tradition as a whole has rarely managed more than an uneasy truce between the physical and the spiritual aspects of the human person. Why is it that the 'Church' has energetically argued, through centuries of ecumenical councils, for the dual nature of Christ but seems still unwilling to accept the full integration of physical and spiritual within humanity, despite Gregory of Nazianzus's comment that 'what has not been assumed has not been redeemed'?