Author: Victor Lee Austin File Type: pdf Christian ethics is a most perplexing subject. This Guide takes the reader through the most fundamental issues surrounding the question of Ethics from a Christian perspective Is ethics a meaningful topic of discourse and can there be such a thing as an ethical argument or ethical persuasion? What is the meaning of the adjective in Christian Ethics?Could right behavior be different for Christians than it is for others? Can we turn to the Bible for help? Does the Bible tell us what to do, or give us insight into the good we should aim to achieve, or give us a narrative by which to live? Is it best to think of ethics as a matter of duty, or good, or excellence? If we take the virtue line and say that ethics is about human excellence, doing well as a human being or succeeding at being a good human being then what will we say about humans who cannot achieve excellence? The virtue approach leads us to place friendship as the goal of ethics. **
Author: Gail Day
File Type: pdf
Representing a new generation of theorists reaffirming the radical dimensions of art, Gail Day launches a bold critique of late twentieth-century art theory and its often reductive analysis of cultural objects. Exploring core debates in discourses on art, from the New Left to theories of critical postmodernism and beyond, Day counters the belief that recent tendencies in art fail to be adequately critical. She also challenges the political inertia that results from these conclusions.Day organizes her defense around critics who have engaged substantively with emancipatory thought and social process T. J. Clark, Manfredo Tafuri, Fredric Jameson, Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, and Hal Foster, among others. She maps the tension between radical dialectics and left nihilism and assesses the interpretation and internalization of negation in art theory. Chapters confront the claim that exchange and equivalence have subsumed the use value of cultural objectsand with it critical distance and interrogate the proposition of completed nihilism and the metropolis put forward in the politics of Italian operaismo. Day covers the debates on symbol and allegory waged within the context of 1980s art and their relation to the writings of Walter Benjamin and Paul de Man. She also examines common conceptions of mediation, totality, negation, and the politics of anticipation. A necessary unsettling of received wisdoms, Dialectical Passions recasts emancipatory reflection in aesthetics, art, and architecture.ReviewGail Days Dialectical Passions is a uniquely important book. Day argues persuasively that the powerful negations that characterize the finest Marxist thinking about art architecture to come from the postwar New Left is characterized by realand passionatedialectical instability. It is largely this, in her view, that prevents it from being fully subsumed by the hegemonic forms of late capitalist culture. The negations practiced by these writers, most notably T. J. Clark and Manfredo Tafuri, have been uncompromisingly realistic and resolutely non-romantic. At the same time, she argues, they share with Marx a belief, however endangered it now is, in the necessity of a genuinely radical political alternative. Days book makes evident the value of such thinking in resisting the fixed polarities and relentless pessimism of much present-day cultural theory and its increasingly empty critiques of capitalist commodification.(Alexander Potts, Max Loehr Collegiate Professor, Department of History of Art, University of Michigan ) ReviewGail Days Dialectical Passions is a uniquely important book. Day argues persuasively that the powerful negations that characterize the finest Marxist thinking about art architecture to come from the postwar New Left is characterized by real--and passionate--dialectical instability. It is largely this, in her view, that prevents it from being fully subsumed by the hegemonic forms of late capitalist culture. The negations practiced by these writers, most notably T. J. Clark and Manfredo Tafuri, have been uncompromisingly realistic and resolutely non-romantic. At the same time, she argues, they share with Marx a belief, however endangered it now is, in the necessity of a genuinely radical political alternative. Days book makes evident the value of such thinking in resisting the fixed polarities and relentless pessimism of much present-day cultural theory and its increasingly empty critiques of capitalist commodification. -- Alexander Potts, Max Loehr Collegiate Professor, Department of History of Art, University of Michigan
Author: Max Blecher
File Type: epub
Often called the Kafka of Romania, Max Blecher died young but not before creating this incandescent novel. Adventures in Immediate Irreality, the masterwork of the Romanian writer Max Blecher, vividly paints the crises of irreality that plagued him in his youth eerie and unsettling mirages wherein he would glimpse future events. In gliding chapters that move with a peculiar dream logic of their own, this memoiristic novel sketches the tremulous, frightening, and exhilarating awakenings of a young man.
Author: Richard Tarnas
File Type: epub
The most lucid and concise presentation I have read, of the grand lines of what every student should know about the history of Western thought. The writing is elegant and carries the reader with the momentum of a novel... It is really a noble performance.blockquote--Joseph Campbell,author ofThe Hero with a Thousand FacesblockquoteHere are the great minds of Western civilization and their pivotal ideas, from Plato to Hegel, from Augustine to Nietzsche, from Copernicus to Freud. Richard Tarnas performs the near-miracle of describing profound philosophical concepts simply but without simplifying them. Ten years in the making and already hailed as a classic, THE PASSION OF THE WESTERN MIND is truly a complete liberal education in a single volume.**
Author: Charles Derry
File Type: pdf
Greatly expanded and updated from the 1977 original, this new edition explores the evolution of the modern horror film, particularly as it reflects anxieties associated with the atomic bomb, the Cold War, 1960s violence, sexual liberation, the Reagan revolution, 911 and the Iraq War. It divides modern horror into three varieties (psychological, demonic and apocalyptic) and demonstrates how horror cinema represents the popular expression of everyday fears while revealing the forces that influence American ideological and political values. Directors given a close reading include Alfred Hitchcock, Brian De Palma, David Cronenberg, Guillermo Del Toro, Michael Haneke, Robert Aldrich, Mel Gibson and George A. Romero. Additional material discusses postmodern remakes, horror franchises and Asian millennial horror. This book also contains more than 950 frame grabs and a very extensive filmography.ReviewAn insightful study...a good choice for film students and researchers --Library JournalEverything about this volume is first rate... This is a book that offers a refreshing approach to a well-worn genre. It is sure to please, delight, and excite a wide audience. Highly recommended. --Cinema BooklistThis really an excellent book on the psychological reasons we go to horror films, what they mean to us, what the metaphors of various manifestations mean, and how our fears reflect in the films that are made. --Film World About the AuthorCharles Derry is professor emeritus of motion picture studies at Wright State University. He has written widely on a variety of popular culture topics, including film, television and ideology.
Author: Chana Bloch
File Type: pdf
Mrs. Dumpty is a riveting memoir-in-verse about a great fall, the dissolution of a long and loving marriage. Chana Blochs poems speak with candor and compassion, and without a trace of self-pity, about the familiar strains in a marriage of many years - aging, dependency, the erosion of feeling - as compounded by the ravages of a spouses mental illness. She writes not only about horrors like electroshock therapy but about the after-shocks of history as well - in this case, the trauma of Hitlers Germany, which continues to take its toll. These poems, remarkable for their precision of language and the power of their imagery, are shot through with humor and wit even at their most tragic.
Author: Frank Close
File Type: pdf
Boasting more than three hundred illustrations, the majority in full color, The Particle Odyssey takes us on an exhilarating tour of the subatomic world.The pictures here are truly marvelous--over 100 of the best images ever taken of particle events--mysterious, abstract, often beautiful photographs of the tracks of subatomic particles as they speed, curve, dance, or explode through cloud and bubble chambers, stacks of photographic emulsion, and giant multi-element detectors. There are illustrations of spiraling electrons, the tell-tale vees of strange particles, matter and antimatter born from raw energy, energetic jets of particles spraying out from the decay points of quarks and gluons. Complementing the illustrations is a vividly written account of the key experiments and fundamental discoveries that have led to our current understanding of the nature of the universe. There are individual portraits of all the major subatomic particles, from the electron to the newly discovered top quark. The authors describe the history of experimental particle physics its origins in the discovery of X-rays in 1895 the dissection of the atom by Rutherford and others the unexpected revelations of the cosmic rays the discovery of quarks and the rise of the standard model in the last part of the 20th century. And they also look at the great questions that face physicists today--Where did antimatter go? What is dark matter? Can there be a theory of everything?A perfect gift for science buffs, The Particle Odyssey will enthrall everyone eager for a glimpse into the previously unknown the world of the atom.From Library JournalIncorporating much new material, this revised version of the authors The Particle Explosion (1987) details the history of particle physics, expounds the state of the art as it now stands, and points to some of the unanswered questions that are now beginning to be addressed. Both Close and Christine Sutton are professional physicists at Oxford University, and Michael Marten is a science photographer and journalist. Their well-written text succeeds in explaining complex scientific concepts for lay readers without oversimplifying them or patronizing the audience. The color illustrations are dazzlingly attractive and complement the text. Captions on the bubble chamber photos are a great help in unraveling the particle interactions shown. This superb explication of fundamental physical science is highly recommended for academic and public libraries.Jack W. Weigel, Ann Arbor, MI 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. ReviewSucceeds in providing readers with an overview of the historical development of particle physics and an appreciation of the exciting ideas that drive current research. No book better captures the visual and intellectual sweep of a century of particle physics.--American Scientist