Central to the study of Chinese civilization at its widest extension is the thought of the great sage K'ung, usually known in the West by the Latinized form of his name, Confucius. His works form the core of more than two thousand years of Oriental civilization, and even today, when he has been officially discarded, his thought remains important for understanding the present as well as the past. Yet Confucius is the property of not only the Orientalists: his ideas stood behind much of the...
Written by the most important scholars in contemporary Confucian studies, these approachable essays focus on the relevance of Confucius’s ideas to modern living, with special attention given to the Analects, his seminal text. Topics covered include tradition and creativity, grief and mourning, the doctrine of correcting names, Confucian kungfu, and moral cultivation.
Considerations on the Principal Events of the French Revolution was a winner in the Scholarly/Reference category at the Chicago Book Clinic’s 2009 Book & Media Show.Germaine de Staël’s voice, which Napoleon Bonaparte tried to silence by censorship and banishment, is a unique and important contribution to revolutionary historiography.Considerations on the Principal Events of the French Revolution, considered Madame de Staël’s magnum opus, became a classic of liberal thinking, making a...
In Consolations David Whyte unpacks aspects of being human that many of us spend our lives trying vainly to avoid – loss, heartbreak, vulnerability, fear – boldly reinterpreting them, fully embracing their complexity, never shying away from paradox in his relentless search for meaning. Beginning with ‘Alone’ and closing with ‘Withdrawal’, each piece in this life-affirming book is a meditation on meaning and context, an invitation to shift and broaden our perspectives on life: pain and joy,...
Is knowledge discovered, or just invented? Can we ever get outside ourselves to know how reality is in itself, independent of us? Philosophical realism raises the question whether in our knowing we connect with an independent reality–or only connect with our own mental constructs. Far from being a silly parlor game, the question impacts our lives concretely and deeply. Modern Western culture has been infected with antirealism and the doubt, skepticism, subjectivism, relativism, and atheism that...
When we act in cooperation with “the Force”—using our whole being to integrate and cooperate with “what is trying to happen” already—then every aspect of our lives is transformed. In the act of cooperating with the Universe, we can aid our own self-actualization as well as the continuing evolution of life and culture on this planet. We become whole as we make others and the culture more whole. We can then embrace our life’s mission and the part we play in the universe.
German philosopher and significant 18th century late Enlightenment thinker Immanuel Kant wrote «Critique of Judgment» in 1790 to solidify his ideas on aesthetics. Divided into two sections, one on aesthetic judgment and the other on teleological judgment, «Critique» proceeds to analyze the human experience of the beautiful and the sublime. From the effect of art and nature to the role of imagination, from objectivity of taste to the limits of representation, Kant investigates a myriad of factors...
German philosopher and significant 18th century late Enlightenment thinker Immanuel Kant wrote «Critique of Judgment» in 1790 to solidify his ideas on aesthetics. Divided into two sections, one on aesthetic judgment and the other on teleological judgment, «Critique» proceeds to analyze the human experience of the beautiful and the sublime. From the effect of art and nature to the role of imagination, from objectivity of taste to the limits of representation, Kant investigates a myriad of factors...
Modern political revolutions since the 18th century have swept away traditional systems of domination by declaring that ‘all men are created equal’. This declaration of equal rights is a fundamental political act – it is the political act in which the political community creates itself in relation to traditional systems of domination. But because it was generally assumed that the subject of these rights is the individual human being, the political community was subordinated to the individual....
Modern political revolutions since the 18th century have swept away traditional systems of domination by declaring that ‘all men are created equal’. This declaration of equal rights is a fundamental political act – it is the political act in which the political community creates itself in relation to traditional systems of domination. But because it was generally assumed that the subject of these rights is the individual human being, the political community was subordinated to the individual....