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Habermas, Critical Theory and Education (Routledge International Studies in the Philosophy of Education)
by Mark Murphy Ted FlemingThe sociologist and philosopher Jürgen Habermas has had a wide-ranging and significant impact on understandings of social change and social conflict. However, there has been no concerted and focused attempt to introduce his ideas to the field of education broadly. This book rectifies this omission and delivers a definitive contribution to the understanding of Habermas's oeuvre as it applies to the field. The authors examine the contribution Habermas's theory has and can make to: pedagogy, learning and classroom interaction; the relation between education, civil society and the state; forms of democracy, reason and critical thinking; and performativity, audit cultures and accountability. Additionally, the book answers a range of more specific questions, including: what are the implications for pedagogy of a shift from a philosophy of consciousness to a philosophy of language?; What contribution can Habermas's re-shaping of speech act theory and communicative rationality make to theories of classroom interaction?; and how can his theories of reason and colonization be used to explore questions of governance and accountability in education?
The Habermas Handbook (New Directions in Critical Theory #40)
by Hauke Brunkhorst Regina Kreide Cristina LafontJürgen Habermas is one of the most influential philosophers of our time. His diagnoses of contemporary society and concepts such as the public sphere, communicative rationality, and cosmopolitanism have influenced virtually all academic disciplines, spurred political debates, and shaped intellectual life in Germany and beyond for more than fifty years. In The Habermas Handbook, leading Habermas scholars elucidate his thought, providing essential insight into his key concepts, the breadth of his work, and his influence across politics, law, the social sciences, and public life.This volume offers a comprehensive overview and an in-depth analysis of Habermas’s work in its entirety. After examining his intellectual biography, it goes on to illuminate the social and intellectual context of Habermasian thought, such as the Frankfurt School, speech-act theory, and contending theories of democracy. The Handbook provides an extensive account of Habermas’s texts, ranging from his dissertation on Schelling to his most recent writing about Europe. It illustrates the development of his thought and its frequently controversial reception while elaborating the central ideas of his work. The book also provides a glossary of key terms and concepts, making the complexity of Habermas’s thought accessible to a broad readership.
Habermas: The Key Concepts (Routledge Key Guides)
by Andrew EdgarAn independently minded champion of ‘the project of modernity’ in a supposedly post-modern age, Jurgen Habermas (1929- ) is one of the most widely influential thinkers of our times. An easy-to-use A-Z guide to a body of work that spans philosophy, sociology, politics, law and cultural theory, Habermas: The Key Concepts explores Habermas’ writings on: capitalism genetics law neo-conservatism universal pragmatics. Fully cross-referenced with extensive suggestions for further reading, this is an essential reference guide to one of the most important social theorists of the last century.
The Habermas-Luhmann Debate
by Gorm HarsteFifty years ago, the two leading German philosophers and sociologists since the Second World War, Jürgen Habermas and Niklas Luhmann, embarked on a sweeping and contentious debate that would continue for decades. Their coauthored 1971 book Theory of Society or Social Technology laid out their opposing positions on meaning, communication, consensus, and dissent—and ultimately the foundations of modern social thought. Habermas and Luhmann would elaborate their disagreement in the years to come in a controversy whose aftershocks divided social theorists by presenting what appeared to be two fundamentally divergent views of the nature of society and what systems theory was capable of explaining.This is the first book in English about one of the most important conflicts in social theory today. Gorm Harste analyzes the Habermas-Luhmann debate from its inception through Habermas’s most recent works, exploring issues such as methodology, ideology, truth, history, and politics. He contextualizes their positions in terms of how each grappled with the legacy of Nazism and sought to provide grounding for an antitotalitarian politics. Harste follows the evolution of the debate, as the fundamental dispute over the normative and practical desirability of agreement and disagreement came to touch upon political questions including the rule of law, the separation of powers, human rights, individualization, and secularization. Ultimately, Harste emphasizes the convergence between Habermas and Luhmann—and the pressing need for social theorists to further unite these two formative accounts of contemporary society.
Habermas on Law and Democracy: Critical Exchanges (Philosophy, Social Theory, and the Rule of Law #6)
by Michel Rosenfeld Andrew AratoIn the first essay, Habermas himself succinctly presents the centerpiece of his theory: his proceduralist paradigm of law. The following essays comprise elaborations, criticisms, and further explorations by others of the most salient issues addressed in his theory. The distinguished group of contributors—internationally prominent scholars in the fields of law, philosophy, and social theory—includes many who have been closely identified with Habermas as well as some of his best-known critics. The final essay is a thorough and lengthy reply by Habermas, which not only engages the most important arguments raised in the preceding essays but also further elaborates and refines some of his own key contributions in Between Facts and Norms. This volume will be essential reading for philosophers, legal scholars, and political and social theorists concerned with understanding the work of one of the leading philosophers of our age.These provocative, in-depth debates between Jürgen Habermas and a wide range of his critics relate to the philosopher's contribution to legal and democratic theory in his recently published Between Facts and Norms. Drawing upon his discourse theory, Habermas has elaborated a novel and powerful account of law that purports to bridge the gap between democracy and rights, by conceiving law to be at once self-imposed and binding.
The Habermas-Rawls Debate
by James Gordon FinlaysonJürgen Habermas and John Rawls are perhaps the two most renowned and influential figures in social and political philosophy of the second half of the twentieth century. In the 1990s, they had a famous exchange in the Journal of Philosophy. Quarreling over the merits of each other’s accounts of the shape and meaning of democracy and legitimacy in a contemporary society, they also revealed how great thinkers working in different traditions read—and misread—one another’s work.In this book, James Gordon Finlayson examines the Habermas-Rawls debate in context and considers its wider implications. He traces their dispute from its inception in their earliest works to the 1995 exchange and its aftermath, as well as its legacy in contemporary debates. Finlayson discusses Rawls’s Political Liberalism and Habermas’s Between Facts and Norms, considering them as the essential background to the dispute and using them to lay out their different conceptions of justice, politics, democratic legitimacy, individual rights, and the normative authority of law. He gives a detailed analysis and assessment of their contributions, assessing the strengths and weaknesses of their different approaches to political theory, conceptions of democracy, and accounts of religion and public reason, and he reflects on the ongoing significance of the debate. The Habermas-Rawls Debate is an authoritative account of the crucial intersection of two major political theorists and an explication of why their dispute continues to matter.
Habit and the History of Philosophy (Rewriting the History of Philosophy)
by Jeremy Dunham Komarine Romdenh-RomlucFor Aristotle, habit was a fundamental aspect of human nature; and for William James, it was the "enormous flywheel" of society. In both the history of philosophy and contemporary research, it is acknowledged as a fundamental topic in ethics, moral psychology, philosophy of action, and phenomenology. This major volume, written by a team of international contributors, is an outstanding collection that offers a thorough and diverse philosophical exploration of habit from the classical period to the modern day. Carefully edited to reflect the breadth of the subject, its 18 chapters are divided into four clear parts: Habit and Ancient Philosophy Habit and Early Modern Philosophy Habit and Modern Philosophy Contemporary Perspectives on Habit. Key topics, debates, and figures are covered such as the emotions, perception, free will, William James, John Dewey, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, John McDowell, and Hubert Dreyfus. Habit and the History of Philosophy is essential reading for students and researchers in the history of philosophy, ethics, phenomenology, philosophy of action, and pragmatism. It will also be extremely useful for those in related disciplines such as religion, sociology, and history.
Habits of the Mind: Intellectual Life as a Christian Calling (The IVP Signature Collection)
by James W. SireChristianHabits of the Mind
Habits of Whiteness: A Pragmatist Reconstruction (American Philosophy)
by Terrance MacMullanHabits of Whiteness: A Pragmatist Reconstruction, second edition, offers a revised and updated look at the concept of whiteness in the United States. Lauded when it was first published and even more relevant today, Habits of Whiteness offers a distinctive way to talk about race and racism by focusing on racial habits and how to change them.Author Terrance MacMullan examines how the concept of racial whiteness has undermined attempts to create a truly democratic society in the United States. By getting to the core of the racism that lives on in unrecognized habits, MacMullan argues that it is possible for white people to recognize the distance between their color-blind ideals and their actual behavior. Revitalizing the work of W. E. B. Du Bois and John Dewey, MacMullan demonstrates how it is possible to reconstruct racial habits and close fissures between people. This second edition of Habits of Whiteness also contains a new introduction, which looks closely at race relations during the Obama and Trump presidencies, including such recent challenges as police brutality in 2020, white supremacy, and the Capitol insurrection. Its persuasive analysis of the impulses of whiteness ultimately reorganizes them into something more compatible with our country's increasingly multicultural heritage.
Habitus, Ressourcen und Studienstrukturen: Passungen und Nicht-Passungen im Fachhochschulstudium
by Sabine EvertzWie erleben Studierende ihr Studium und wie hängt dieses Erleben mit ihren Habitusmustern und Ressourcenausstattungen zusammen? Die soziologische Studie widmet sich aus ungleichheitstheoretischer Perspektive den Passungen und Nicht-Passungen im Fachhochschulstudium. Ergründet wurden Konstellationen von Habitusmustern, Ressourcenausstattungen und Studienstrukturen. Bei den Studienstrukturen handelt es sich unter anderem um studienorganisatorische Strukturen wie die Stundenplangestaltung, um unmittelbar auf die Lehre bezogene Strukturen wie Lehrmethoden und Prüfungsformen oder auch um Strukturen, die im Besonderen das soziale Miteinander betreffen wie die Studienatmosphäre. Die Ergebnisse basieren auf der Analyse von Leitfadeninterviews mit Studierenden der Studienfächer Soziale Arbeit und Maschinenbau sowie auf der Auswertung von Wochenbüchern, die Erstsemesterstudierende in der Studieneingangsphase verfasst haben.
Hablemos de Dios: Un diálogo sobre la religión en el siglo XXI
by Victoria CampsDos pensadoras clave exploran el lugar de las religiones de nuestro mundo, la tendencia al fundamentalismo y la posibilidad de una moral universal. ¿Una moral sin religión es una moral desprovista de fundamento? ¿Es posible pretender una moral universal que pueda ser compartida por creyentes y no creyentes? ¿Qué cabe esperar de las religiones, para bien y para mal? ¿Satisfacen las creencias religiosas alguna necesidad que no puede ser satisfecha de otra forma? ¿Se pueden acercar las posiciones de los creyentes y los no creyentes que deben convivir en una misma sociedad? Éstas y otras muchas preguntas se plantean Victoria Camps y Amelia Valcárcel en este ameno diálogo epistolar sobre la situación de la religión en el giro del nuevo siglo. Desde el deseo de reflexionar sobre la actual situación de lo religioso y con la base de la filosofía occidental, ambas exploran el lugar de las religiones en nuestro mundo, el poder de losmonoteísmos y su tendencia a desviarse hacia el fundamentalismo, la secularización y la posibilidad de una moral universal. En un momento en que en España muchos reclaman, más que nunca, la salida definitiva de la religión de la vida pública, esta defensa desapasionada pero demoledora de la laicidad está más vigente que nunca. Reseña:«El libro, escrito con mucha chispa y poderosa argumentación" cautiva. Difícil sustraerse a sus tesis.»Reyes Mate, El País
The Hacker Ethic and the Spirit of the Information Age: A Radical Approach to the Philosophy of Business
by Pekka HimanenThe Hacker Ethic takes us on a journey through fundamental questions about life in the information age - a trip of constant surprises, after which our time and our lives can be seen from unexpected perspectives. Nearly a century ago, Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism articulated the animating spirit of the industrial age, the Protestant ethic. In the original meaning of the word, hackers are enthusiastic computer programmers who share their work with others; they are not computer criminals. Now Pekka Himanen - together with Linus Torvalds and Manuel Castells - articulates how hackers represent a new opposing ethos for the information age. Underlying hackers' technical creations - such as the Internet and the personal computer, which have become symbols of our time - are the hacker values that produced them. These values promote passionate and freely rhythmed work; the belief that individuals can create great things by joining forces in imaginative ways; and the need to maintain our existing ethical ideals, such as privacy and equality, in our new increasingly technologized society.
A Hacker Manifesto
by McKenzie WarkA double is haunting the world—the double of abstraction, the virtual reality of information, programming or poetry, math or music, curves or colorings upon which the fortunes of states and armies, companies and communities now depend. The bold aim of this book is to make manifest the origins, purpose, and interests of the emerging class responsible for making this new world—for producing the new concepts, new perceptions, and new sensations out of the stuff of raw data. A Hacker Manifesto deftly defines the fraught territory between the ever more strident demands by drug and media companies for protection of their patents and copyrights and the pervasive popular culture of file sharing and pirating. This vexed ground, the realm of so-called “intellectual property,” gives rise to a whole new kind of class conflict, one that pits the creators of information—the hacker class of researchers and authors, artists and biologists, chemists and musicians, philosophers and programmers—against a possessing class who would monopolize what the hacker produces. Drawing in equal measure on Guy Debord and Gilles Deleuze, A Hacker Manifesto offers a systematic restatement of Marxist thought for the age of cyberspace and globalization. In the widespread revolt against commodified information, McKenzie Wark sees a utopian promise, beyond the property form, and a new progressive class, the hacker class, who voice a shared interest in a new information commons.
El hada democratica
by Raffaele Simone¿Debe la democracia ser remplazada por otra cosa? Raffaele Simone examina el paradigma político de lo democrático, que describe como un sistema complejo, valiente e ingenioso en el que una serie de propósitos irrealizables pero cargados de una especie de magia dan lugar a un delicado equilibrio. Estas ficciones, numerosas y entrelazadas, conforman un marco conceptual de complejidad impresionante que se mantiene en pie por obra de un hechizo. Simone analiza los distintos componentes de la democracia y demuestra la fragilidad de un sistema basado en metas inalcanzables pero necesarias, que compara con un mikado en el que la menor sacudida puede deshacerlo todo. Simone defiende la existencia de esas metas, sin las cuales, entre otros muchos peligros, caeríamos en la apatía, la desconfianza, la caída de la inversión y el ausentismo electoral.
Hagakure: The Code of the Samurai (The Manga Edition)
by Yamamoto TsunetomoBased on William Scott Wilson's definitive translation, adapted by scriptwriter and comic book/manga author Sean Wilson, and with lively drawings by well-known illustrator Chie Kutsuwada, this first-ever graphic treatment of what's considered the most influential of all samurai treatises is sure to delight manga fans, martial arts enthusiasts, and students of Japanese culture.Reminiscent of The Arabian Nights in structure, Hagakure is a collection of tales and anecdotes that offer instruction and insight into the philosophy and code of behavior that foster the true spirit of Bushido—the Way of the Warrior. A young, upcoming samurai seeks the advice of an older, seasoned warrior who has become a Zen monk. The ambitious young samurai humbly begs to learn from the old master, who consents. So begins a series of eventful meetings.At each sitting. the master tells his young student tales of samurai past. Tales of famous warriors are recited, as well as ignoble gaffs. With brutal, unrelenting samurai justice, wrongs are righted and judgment is enacted. With each incident, the young novice learns what it means to be a samurai. Learns what courage and right thought are. Learns the harsh realities and subtle wisdom of his age.Writer Sean Wilson and illustrator Chie Kutsuwada both bring ample experience in the genre to this project. And, as an added bonus, William Scott Wilson, the translator of the original Kodansha International version of the book, provides an illuminating Afterword.
Hagakure
by Yamamoto TsunetomoThe Hagakure is one of the most influential of all Japanese texts#151;written nearly 300 years ago by Tsunetomo Yamamoto to summarize the very essence of the Japanese Samurai bushido ("warrior") spirit. Its influence has been felt throughout the world and yet its existence is scarcely known to many Westerners. This is the first translation to include the complete first two books of the Hagakure and the most reliable and authentic passages contained within the third book; all other English translations published previously have been extremely fragmentary and incomplete. Alex Bennett's completely new and highly readable translation of this essential work includes extensive footnotes that serve to fill in many cultural and historical gaps in the previous translations. This unique combination of readability and scholarship gives Bennett's translation a distinct advantage over all previous English editions.
Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai
by William Scott Wilson Yamamoto TsunetomoLiving and dying with bravery and honor is at the heart of Hagakure, a series of texts written by an eighteenth-century samurai, Yamamoto Tsunetomo. It is a window into the samurai mind, illuminating the concept of bushido (the Way of the Warrior), which dictated how samurai were expected to behave, conduct themselves, live, and die. While Hagakure was for many years a secret text known only to the warrior vassals of the Nabeshima clan to which the author belonged, it later came to be recognized as a classic exposition of samurai thought. The original Hagakure consists of over 1,300 short texts that Tsunetomo dictated to a younger samurai over a seven-year period. William Scott Wilson has selected and translated here three hundred of the most representative of those texts to create an accessible distillation of this guide for samurai. No other translator has so thoroughly and eruditely rendered this text into English. For this edition, Wilson has added a new introduction that casts Hagakure in a different light than ever before. Tsunetomo refers to bushido as "the Way of death," a description that has held a morbid fascination for readers over the years. But in Tsunetomo's time, bushido was a nuanced concept that related heavily to the Zen concept of muga, the "death" of the ego. Wilson's revised introduction gives the historical and philosophical background for that more metaphorical reading of Hagakure, and through this lens, the classic takes on a fresh and nuanced appeal.
Hagakure
by Tsunetoma Yamamoto Alexander BennettThe Hagakure is one of the most influential of all Japanese texts-written nearly 300 years ago by Tsunetomo Yamamoto to summarize the very essence of the Japanese Samurai bushido ("warrior") spirit. Its influence has been felt throughout the world and yet its existence is scarcely known to many Westerners. This is the first translation to include the complete first two books of the Hagakure and the most reliable and authentic passages contained within the third book; all other English translations published previously have been extremely fragmentary and incomplete.Alex Bennett's completely new and highly readable translation of this essential work includes extensive footnotes that serve to fill in many cultural and historical gaps in the previous translations. This unique combination of readability and scholarship gives Bennett's translation a distinct advantage over all previous English editions.
Hagakure. El camino del samurái
by Yamamoto TsunetomoUn clásico de la cultura japonesa que ayuda a la introspección y la concentración en nuestro mundo cada vez más frenético. Considerado como una de las fuentes de inspiración de Fernando Alonso, el piloto lo cita frecuentemente en sus intervenciones públicas y redes sociales. «Cuando las cosas se hacen despacio,salen mal siete veces de cada diez.El guerrero hace las cosas deprisa.» Hagakure significa «a la sombra de las hojas» y es una obra literaria japonesa escrita por Yamamoto Tsunetomo en el siglo XVIII. Su intención era transmitir a las generaciones venideras las reglas del bushido, es decir, el código guerrero de los samuráis. Se trata de un breviario, un compendio de anécdotas y reflexiones de temática variada y sin un orden preestablecido, hecho con la intención de transmitir introspección y conocimiento filosófico al tiempo que promueve el espíritu del bushido. El texto solo iba dirigido a los guerreros y se mantuvo en secreto durante muchos años. Posteriormente llegó a convertirse en un clásico de la cultura japonesa. Con una esencia que se contrapone al materialismo imperante en nuestra sociedad, este texto ha alcanzado gran notoriedad en nuestros días y ha llegado a convertirse en libro de cabecera de personajes tan admirados como Fernando Alonso, que ha llegado a tatuarse un samurái en su espalda. «¿Yo, en una palabra?», respondía recientemente en una entrevista: «Guerrero. [El samurái] es una manera de recordarme quién soy, de dónde vengo y la fuerza que tengo que tener cada día.» Fernando Alonso ha dicho...«Cierro el libro, respiro 7 veces y me voy a dormir.»
Haifa Republic: A Democratic Future for Israel
by Omri BoehmA provocative argument for a new way of seeing Israel, Zionism, and the two-state solution.Haifa Republic: A Democratic Future for Israel is an urgent wake-up call. The philosopher Omri Boehm argues that it is long past time to recognize that there will not be a two-state solution to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian people. After fifty years, Israel&’s occupation of the West Bank constitutes annexation in all but name, even as the legitimate claims of the Arab population, soon to be a national majority, remain unaddressed. Meanwhile, daily life goes on under conditions rightly likened to apartheid. For liberals in Israel and America to continue to place their hopes in a two-state solution is a form of willful and culpable blindness, especially now that Israeli leaders across the political spectrum have begun to speak of ethnic cleansing. A catastrophe is in the making.But Haifa Republic also offers grounds for hope. Catastrophe can be averted, Boehm contends, by reconfiguring Israel as a single binational state in which Palestinians and Jews both possess human rights and equal citizenship. The original Zionists—Theodor Herzl, Ze&’ev Jabotinsky, and, early in his career, David Ben-Gurion—all advocated such a federation, and as prime minister, Menachem Begin successfully submitted a kindred plan to the Knesset. A binational federation offers a last chance for the two peoples who call Palestine home to live in peace and mutual respect and to have a truly democratic future in common.
Haig's Coup: How Richard Nixon's Closest Aide Forced Him from Office
by Ray LockerWhen General Alexander M. Haig Jr. returned to the White House on May 3, 1973, he found the Nixon administration in worse shape than he had imagined. President Richard Nixon, reelected in an overwhelming landslide just six months earlier, had accepted the resignations of his top aides—the chief of staff H. R. Haldeman and the domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman—just three days earlier. Haldeman and Ehrlichman had enforced the president’s will and protected him from his rivals and his worst instincts for four years. Without them, Nixon stood alone, backed by a staff that lacked gravitas and confidence as the Watergate scandal snowballed. Nixon needed a savior, someone who would lift his fortunes while keeping his White House from blowing apart. He hoped that savior would be his deputy national security adviser, Alexander Haig, whom he appointed chief of staff. But Haig’s goal was not to keep Nixon in office—it was to remove him. In Haig’s Coup, Ray Locker uses recently declassified documents to tell the true story of how Haig orchestrated Nixon’s demise, resignation, and subsequent pardon. A story of intrigues, cover-ups, and treachery, this incisive history shows how Haig engineered the “soft coup” that ended our long national nightmare and brought Watergate to an end.
Hajnal Andréka and István Németi on Unity of Science: From Computing to Relativity Theory Through Algebraic Logic (Outstanding Contributions to Logic #19)
by Judit Madarász Gergely SzékelyThis book features more than 20 papers that celebrate the work of Hajnal Andréka and István Németi. It illustrates an interaction between developing and applying mathematical logic. The papers offer new results as well as surveys in areas influenced by these two outstanding researchers. They also provide details on the after-life of some of their initiatives.Computer science connects the papers in the first part of the book. The second part concentrates on algebraic logic. It features a range of papers that hint at the intricate many-way connections between logic, algebra, and geometry. The third part explores novel applications of logic in relativity theory, philosophy of logic, philosophy of physics and spacetime, and methodology of science. They include such exciting subjects as time travelling in emergent spacetime. The short autobiographies of Hajnal Andréka and István Németi at the end of the book describe an adventurous journey from electric engineering and Maxwell’s equations to a complex system of computer programs for designing Hungary’s electric power system, to exploring and contributing deep results to Tarskian algebraic logic as the deepest core theory of such questions, then on to applications of the results in such exciting new areas as relativity theory in order to rejuvenate logic itself.
Hakuin on Kensho: The Four Ways of Knowing
by Albert LowKensho is the Zen experience of waking up to one's own true nature--of understanding oneself to be not different from the Buddha-nature that pervades all existence. The Japanese Zen Master Hakuin (1689-1769) considered the experience to be essential. In his autobiography he says: "Anyone who would call himself a member of the Zen family must first achieve kensho-realization of the Buddha's way. If a person who has not achieved kensho says he is a follower of Zen, he is an outrageous fraud. A swindler pure and simple." Hakuin's short text on kensho, "Four Ways of Knowing of an Awakened Person," is a little-known Zen classic. The "four ways" he describes include the way of knowing of the Great Perfect Mirror, the way of knowing equality, the way of knowing by differentiation, and the way of the perfection of action. Rather than simply being methods for "checking" for enlightenment in oneself, these ways ultimately exemplify Zen practice. Albert Low has provided careful, line-by-line commentary for the text that illuminates its profound wisdom and makes it an inspiration for deeper spiritual practice.
Hakuin's Song of Zazen: Yamada Mumon Roshi on Zen Practice
by Yamada Mumon RoshiRenowned modern Zen master Yamada Mumon Rōshi uses Hakuin&’s famous poem of spiritual realization, Song of Zazen, as a starting point to embark on a lively commentary on Zen practice in contemporary life.First published in Japan in 1962, Hakuin&’s Song of Zazen is a celebrated collection of short essays by Zen master Yamada Mumon Rōshi. Translated into English for the first time, it introduces the story of Hakuin&’s early life and training, then uses his classic Zen chanting poem, Song of Zazen, to make wide-ranging considerations of the Zen tradition and its applications in modern Japanese life. As Daisetz Suzuki remarks in his foreword, what gives Mumon&’s book its unique flavor and makes it different from previous works by Zen teachers are his forays into matters of ordinary, everyday life, expanding his Zen teaching to encompass interests that are closely linked with his lay audience. He responds to a news article that catches his eye in the morning paper, delivers criticism on contemporary political and social trends, explores matters as diversified as the uses of atomic energy, the court culture of seventeenth-century France, a leper hospital on an island in the Inland Sea, Albert Schweitzer and other noted Western figures—and more. In doing this Mumon gives readers open access to the opinions, judgements, and practical thinking of a leading Zen master—a map of his planet, so to speak. Each brief chapter of Mumon&’s book is an invitation to follow Hakuin and himself down the path of true Zen realization.
Halakhah: The Rabbinic Idea of Law (Library of Jewish Ideas #2)
by Chaim N. SaimanHow the rabbis of the Talmud transformed everything into a legal question—and Jewish law into a way of thinking and talking about everythingThough typically translated as “Jewish law,” the term halakhah is not an easy match for what is usually thought of as law. This is because the rabbinic legal system has rarely wielded the political power to enforce its many detailed rules, nor has it ever been the law of any state. Even more idiosyncratically, the talmudic rabbis claim that the study of halakhah is a holy endeavor that brings a person closer to God—a claim no country makes of its law.In this panoramic book, Chaim Saiman traces how generations of rabbis have used concepts forged in talmudic disputation to do the work that other societies assign not only to philosophy, political theory, theology, and ethics but also to art, drama, and literature. In the multifaceted world of halakhah where everything is law, law is also everything, and even laws that serve no practical purpose can, when properly studied, provide surprising insights into timeless questions about the very nature of human existence.What does it mean for legal analysis to connect humans to God? Can spiritual teachings remain meaningful and at the same time rigidly codified? Can a modern state be governed by such law? Guiding readers across two millennia of richly illuminating perspectives, this book shows how halakhah is not just “law” but an entire way of thinking, being, and knowing.