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Storehouse of Treasures: Recovering the Riches of Chan and Zen
by Nelson FosterStorehouse of Treasures unearths wise and beautiful elements of Chan and Zen still little known in the West, revealing unexpected aspects of the tradition and new implications for practice.Since the dawn of Chan and Zen in medieval China and Japan, members of these schools have enlivened their teaching by creatively adopting and adapting terms, images, principles, poetry, and lore native to their societies. Unfortunately, so much of that cultural wealth has been &“lost in translation&” that Western practitioners have barely begun to discover and appreciate this extraordinarily rich legacy. In Storehouse of Treasures, second-generation American Zen teacher Nelson Foster makes a series of adventuresome forays into the trove of material laid up by the Dharma ancestors, bringing to light:Masters&’ delight in playing with words, stories, and inherited Buddhist concepts, bending them to express the Dharma in inspired ways The powerful influence that Taoist and Confucian thought exerted in the formation of Chan and Zen The emphasis the two schools have laid on excellence of character as well as on profound awakening The experiential meaning and enduring importance to the tradition of ideals little associated with it today, like integrity, shame, and contentment How &“knowing the tune&” of a fellow student, a mentor, or a teacher of old lies at the heart of transmitting the Dharma Lifting to attention a diverse set of ancient yet still luminous Dharma gems, Foster urges their relevance and value to us as students of the Buddha Way and as citizens of a world increasingly fractious and imperiled.
Stories Matter: The Role of Narrative in Medical Ethics (Reflective Bioethics)
by Martha Montello Rita CharonFirst published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Stories and the Brain: The Neuroscience of Narrative
by Paul B. ArmstrongThis book explains how the brain interacts with the social world—and why stories matter.How do our brains enable us to tell and follow stories? And how do stories affect our minds? In Stories and the Brain, Paul B. Armstrong analyzes the cognitive processes involved in constructing and exchanging stories, exploring their role in the neurobiology of mental functioning. Armstrong argues that the ways in which stories order events in time, imitate actions, and relate our experiences to others' lives are correlated to cortical processes of temporal binding, the circuit between action and perception, and the mirroring operations underlying embodied intersubjectivity. He reveals how recent neuroscientific findings about how the brain works—how it assembles neuronal syntheses without a central controller—illuminate cognitive processes involving time, action, and self-other relations that are central to narrative.An extension of his previous book, How Literature Plays with the Brain, this new study applies Armstrong's analysis of the cognitive value of aesthetic harmony and dissonance to narrative. Armstrong explains how narratives help the brain negotiate the neverending conflict between its need for pattern, synthesis, and constancy and its need for flexibility, adaptability, and openness to change. The neuroscience of these interactions is part of the reason stories give shape to our lives even as our lives give rise to stories.Taking up the age-old question of what our ability to tell stories reveals about language and the mind, this truly interdisciplinary project should be of interest to humanists and cognitive scientists alike.
Stories of Indigenous Success in Australian Sport: Journeys to the AFL and NRL
by Richard Light John Robert EvansThis book presents journeys of sixteen Indigenous Australian athletes from their first touch of a‘footy’ to the highest levels of Australian football and rugby league, conceptualized as a processof learning. The authors challenge simplistic explanations of Indigenous success in Australianfootball and rugby league, centered on the notion of the ‘natural athlete’. The book tracesthe development of Indigenous sporting expertise as a lifelong process of learning situated inlocal culture and shaped by the challenges of transitioning into professional sport. Individually,the life stories told by the participants provide fascinating insights into experience, cultureand learning. Collectively, they provide deep understanding of the powerful influence thatAboriginal culture exerted on the participants’ journeys to the top of their sports while locatingindividual experience and agency within larger economic, cultural and social considerations.Stories of Indigenous Success in Australian Sport will be of interest to students and scholarsacross a range of disciplines including Indigenous studies, physical education, education, sportmanagement and sociology
Stories of the Buddha: Being Selections from the Jataka
by Caroline A. DavidsOne of the most important texts in the literature of Buddhism, the Jātaka contains stories that celebrate the previous lives of the Buddha. The future Buddha may appear in these "jātakas" as a king, an outcast, a god, an elephant — but in whatever form he takes, he exhibits some virtue which the tale then proceeds to inculcate in the reader.This superb selection of 47 stories of the Buddha — among them "The Bar of Gold Jātaka," "The King's Lesson Jātaka," "The Gem-Thief Jātaka," and "The Great Ape Jātaka" — are filled with humor, pathos, and narrative appeal that have endeared them to generations of Buddhists and to audiences around the world. Many are directly related to ancient Indian folklore and top the traditional stories and myths of other cultures, among them the beast fables of Aesop. Many have been the subject of countless works of Buddhist art.Although the settings of the stories are often imaginary, they offer scholars, students, and enthusiasts of Buddhism and Buddhist culture and society. This collection has been edited and translated by one of the most distinguished Western scholars of Buddhism, Caroline A. F. Rhys Davids, who has contributed a lively introductory essay to these landmarks of folk literature.
Stormy Weather: Pagan Cosmologies, Christian Times, Climate Wreckage
by William E. ConnollyComposed as a counter-history of western philosophical and political thought, Stormy Weather explores the role western cosmologies have played in the conquests of paganism in Europe and the Americas, the production of climate wreckage, and the concealment of that wreckage from western humanists and earth scientists until late in the day. A lived cosmology, Connolly says, contains embedded understandings about the beginnings of the earth and the way time unfolds. The text engages the major western cosmologies of Augustine, Descartes, Kant, Tocqueville, together with pagan and minor western orientations that posed challenges to them or could have. Hesiod, Ovid, William Apess, Amazonian and Aztec cosmologies, Catherine Keller’s minor Christianity, James Baldwin, and Michel Serres instigate key responses, often challenging binary logics and the subject/object dichotomy with a world of multiple human and nonhuman subjectivities. Connolly pursues a conception of time as a multiplicity of intersecting temporalities to come to terms with the vicissitudes of climate destruction and the grandeur of an earth neither highly susceptible to mastery nor designed to harmonize smoothly with humans. The book revisits the “improbable necessity” of a politics of swarming to respond to the ongoing wreckage and potential fascist responses to vast infusions of climate refugees from the south into temperate-zone capitalist states. Stormy Weather draws on the work of earth scientists, indigenous thinkers, naturalists, humanists, and students of nonwestern cosmologies. Ultimately, Connolly contends that critical intellectuals today must not remain enclosed in disciplinary silos, or even in “the humanities” as currently defined, to do justice to our moment of climate wreckage.
Story of Philosophy: The Lives And Opinions Of The Great Philosophers
by Will DurantA brilliant and concise account of the lives and ideas of the great philosophers -- Plato, Aristotle, Bacon, Spinoza, Voltaire, Kant, Schopenhauer, Spencer, Nietzsche, Bergson, Croce, Russell, Santayana, James and Dewey -- The Story of Philosophy is one of the great books of our time. Few write for the nonspecialist as well as Will Durant, and this book is a splendid example of his eminently readable scholarship. Durant's insight and wit never cease to dazzle; The Story of Philosophy is a key book for any reader who wishes to survey the history and development of philosophical ideas in the Western world.yle. The Story of Philosophy opens vistas of intellectual adventure and growth to those who hunger for the total perspective that is philosophy. Within its pages, Durant seeks the wisest and most indestructible answers from the world's greatest philosophers to the persistent and fundamental questions about first and last things.
Storying Pedagogy as Critical Praxis in the Neoliberal University: Encounters and Disruptions (Rethinking Higher Education)
by Mark Vicars Ligia PelosiThis book examines how teaching and learning and teacher and student identities are being reframed in higher education by neoliberal policies and practices. It shares how teachers perform teaching and learning duties in relation to prescribed institutional policies and how teachers insert dissonant pedagogies as a critical practice.The book explores narrative pedagogy as a disruptive presence and a space for critique. It interrogates personal/professional experience of educational systems that present educators juggling complexity and meeting competing demands to make learning meaningful for students. Each contribution will act as a counterpoint and provide a synoptic method for comparison. The book re-constructs meaning from the generic narrative of the public face of education, which homogenizes and diminishes collective understandings of teachers and teaching. This book provides a contemporary account of the social realities experienced within the higher education classroom across the globe.
Storying the World: The Contributions of Carl Leggo on Language and Poetry (Studies in Curriculum Theory Series)
by Rita Irwin Erika Hasebe-Ludt Anita SinnerBringing together Carl Leggo’s most significant contributions over the past 30 years, this book celebrates his work in curriculum studies, English language arts, literacy and life writing, poetry, and arts education. Organized around three thematic sections—Loving Language, Narrating Ruminations, and Storying the World—the volume highlights his efforts across interrelated fields of inquiry, including narrative and poetic inquiry, contemplative inquiry, and social fiction. The text extends the discussion and conversation of curriculum studies and is greatly enhanced with a selection of original poetry by this incomparable poet, scholar, and teacher. Carl Leggo is renowned not only for his ground-breaking work at the University of British Colombia, but also for his tremendous influence on graduate education across the English-speaking world. This volume honours that immense contribution in today’s time of academic change and development.
Storytelling Practices in Home and Educational Contexts: Perspectives from Conversation Analysis
by Maryanne Theobald Anna Filipi Binh Thanh TaThis book brings together researchers from across the globe to share their work on the micro-analyses of storytelling. By doing so, the book helps to deepen the understanding of, and track storytelling practices cross-culturally and longitudinally in the home, at school, and in higher education. Through the unique focus on education and learning, this book provides a lens with which to identify how children’s and adolescents’ language development and sense of self in storytelling are supported in various contexts: the home, classroom, playground or in the higher education context. It explores the work, identity and practices of friends, teachers and lecturers in teaching, learning, reflection and supervision. Importantly, in identifying these practices, the book presents opportunities to assist parents and teachers, to inform pedagogy in teacher education, and to support effective doctoral supervision. The focus on storytelling in homes, education, and for learning, and the practical applications of the findings, contribute to the ongoing research in both education and conversation analysis. Chapter 8 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.
Storytelling and Collective Psychology: Ancient Wisdom, Modern Life and the Work of Derren Brown
by Darren KelseyThis book examines the work of psychological illusionist Derren Brown to understand the significance of storytelling and ancient philosophy in our society. Reflecting on the social disconnection and political polarisation of recent times, Darren Kelsey considers how we can rebuild a sense of collective cohesion and common good, weaving together contemporary psychology with ancient Stoicism to cut through the noise of modern life. Kelsey shows that Brown is more than a stage performer: he’s an enlightened magician who offers us guidance for navigating the challenges life throws at us, using his skills and wisdom to help us better understand ourselves and enable human flourishing. In this rigorous examination of Brown’s work, Kelsey makes a compelling case for paying closer attention to our personal, cultural and political stories and beliefs to help create a better future – for ourselves, our communities, and the planet.
Storytelling and Ethics: Literature, Visual Arts and the Power of Narrative (Routledge Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Literature)
by Colin Davis Hanna MeretojaIn recent years there has been a huge amount of both popular and academic interest in storytelling as something that is an essential part of not only literature and art but also our everyday lives as well as our dreams, fantasies, aspirations, historical self-understanding, and political actions. The question of the ethics of storytelling always, inevitably, lurks behind these discussions, though most frequently it remains implicit rather than explicit. This volume explores the ethical potential and risks of storytelling from an interdisciplinary perspective. It stages a dialogue between contemporary literature and visual arts across media (film, photography, performative arts), interdisciplinary theoretical perspectives (debates in narrative studies, trauma studies, cultural memory studies, ethical criticism), and history (traumatic histories of violence, cultural history). The collection analyses ethical issues involved in different strategies employed in literature and art to narrate experiences that resist telling and imagining, such as traumatic historical events, including war and political conflicts. The chapters explore the multiple ways in which the ethics of storytelling relates to the contemporary arts as they work with, draw on, and contribute to historical imagination. The book foregrounds the connection between remembering and imagining and explores the ambiguous role of narrative in the configuration of selves, communities, and the relation to the non-human. While discussing the ethical aspects of storytelling, it also reflects on the relevance of artistic storytelling practices for our understanding of ethics. Making an original contribution to interdisciplinary narrative studies and narrative ethics, this book both articulates a complex understanding of how artistic storytelling practices enable critical distance from culturally dominant narrative practices, and analyzes the limitations and potential pitfalls of storytelling.
Storytelling and Improvisation as Anti-Racist Pedagogies: Challenging White Supremacy in Elementary Education
by Samuel Jaye Tanner Erin T. MillerThis book theorizes and describes the concept of transformative critical whiteness pedagogies that are rooted in theories and practices of improvisation. It shows how these pedagogies invite people, especially white people, into the urgent work of resisting the ongoing production and affirmation of white supremacy.Using the frameworks of storytelling and story analysis, this book uses narrative to invite the reader into ongoing work to design and make sense of teaching and learning about whiteness that would meaningfully account for a grapple with white supremacy. Chapter 1 offers the conceptual framework rooted in theories and practices of improvisation that allow for new ways to think about engaging whiteness in anti-racist pedagogies, which the authors name transformative critical whiteness pedagogies. Chapters 2–4 tell and analyze the stories that emerged out of this work to design and facilitate transformative critical whiteness pedagogies with white elementary students, white college students, and then black elementary students in the US. Chapters 5 and 6 discuss the challenges of developing and implementing transformative critical whiteness pedagogies in K-12 contexts. The final chapters offer a discussion of the improvisational ethos, as well as an overview of the authors’ ongoing work to engage people, especially white people, in getting smarter about whiteness.Using simple, straightforward language to address complex ideas about anti-racist pedagogies, this volume will be important reading for pre-service teachers and teacher educators in Critical Whiteness Studies, Critical Multicultural Education, Social Foundations of Education, Elementary Education, and Race and Culture Studies.
Storytelling: The Destruction of the Inalienable in the Age of the Holocaust (SUNY series, Literature . . . in Theory)
by Rodolphe GaschéIn Storytelling, Rodolphe Gasché reexamines the muteness of Holocaust survivors, that is, their inability to tell their stories. This phenomenon has not been explained up to now without reducing the violence of the events to which survivors were subjected, on the one hand, and diminishing the specific harm that has been done to them as human beings, on the other. Distinguishing storytelling from testifying and providing information, Gasché asserts that the utter senselessness of the violence inflicted upon them is what inhibited survivors from making sense of their experience in the form of tellable stories. In a series of readings of major theories of storytelling by three thinkers—Wilhelm Schapp, whose work will be a welcome discovery to many English-speaking audiences, Walter Benjamin, and Hannah Arendt—Gasché systematically assesses the consequences of the loss of the storytelling faculty, considered by some an inalienable possession of the human, both for the victims' humanity and for philosophy.This book is freely available in an open access edition thanks to Knowledge Unlatched—an initiative that provides libraries and institutions with a centralized platform to support OA collections and from leading publishing houses and OA initiatives. Learn more at the Knowledge Unlatched website at: https://www.knowledgeunlatched.org/, and access the book online at the SUNY Open Access Repository at http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12648/7236.
Storythinking: The New Science of Narrative Intelligence (No Limits)
by Angus FletcherEvery time we think ahead, we are crafting a story. Every daily plan—and every political vision, social movement, scientific hypothesis, business proposal, and technological breakthrough—starts with “what if?” Linking causes to effects, considering hypotheticals and counterfactuals, asking how other people will react: these are the essence of narrative. So why do we keep overlooking story’s importance to intelligence in favor of logic?This book explains how and why our brains think in stories. Angus Fletcher, an expert in neuroscientific approaches to narrative, identifies this capacity as “storythinking.” He demonstrates that storythinking is fundamental to what makes us human. Artificial intelligence can perform symbolic logic, rational deduction, and mathematical calculation, but it is incapable of deliberating in narrative. Drawing on new research in neuroscience and narrative theory, Fletcher explores the nature of imagination, innovation, and creativity. He provides concise answers to big questions: How does storythinking work? Why did it evolve? How can it misfire? What problems can it solve?Revealing the significance of storythinking from science to business to philosophy, this book also provides ways for readers to harness its power to script better tomorrows.
Strange Brethren: Refugees, Religious Bonds, and Reformation in Frankfurt, 1554–1608 (Studies in Early Modern German History)
by Maximilian Miguel ScholzIn the sixteenth century, German cities and territories welcomed thousands of refugees fleeing the religious persecution sparked by the Reformation. As Strange Brethren reveals, these Reformation refugees had a profound impact on the societies they entered. Exploring one major destination for refugees—the city of Frankfurt am Main—Maximilian Miguel Scholz finds that these forced migrants inspired new religious bonds, new religious animosities, and new religious institutions, playing a critical role in the course of the Reformation in Frankfurt and beyond. Strange Brethren traces the first half century of refugee life in Frankfurt, beginning in 1554 when the city granted twenty-four families of foreign Protestants housing, workspace, and their own church. Soon thousands more refugees arrived. While the city’s ruling oligarchs were happy to support these foreigners, the city’s clergy resented and feared the refugees. A religious fissure emerged, and Frankfurt’s Protestants divided into two competing camps—Lutheran natives and Reformed (Calvinist) foreigners. Both groups began to rethink and reinforce their religious institutions. The religious and civic impact was substantial and enduring. As Strange Brethren shows, many of the hallmarks of modern Protestantism—its confessional divides and its disciplinary structures—resulted from the encounter between refugees and their hosts.Studies in Early Modern German History
Strange Multiplicity: Constitutionalism In An Age Of Diversity
by James H. TullyIn the inaugural set of Seeley Lectures, the distinguished political philosopher James Tully addresses the demands for cultural recognition that constitute the major conflicts of today: supranational associations, nationalism and federalism, linguistic and ethnic minorities, feminism, multiculturalism and aboriginal self government. Neither modern nor post-modern constitutionalism can adjudicate such claims justly. However, by surveying 400 years of constitutional practice, with special attention to the American aboriginal peoples, Tully develops a new philosophy of constitutionalism based on dialogues of conciliation which, he argues, have the capacity to mediate contemporary conflicts and bring peace to the twenty-first century. Strange Multiplicity brings profound historical, critical and philosophical perspectives to our most pressing contemporary conflicts, and provides an authoritative guide to constitutional possibilities in a multicultural age.
Strange Stars: How Science Fiction and Fantasy Transformed Popular Music
by Jason HellerA Hugo Award-winning author and music journalist explores the weird and wild story of when rock ’n’ roll met the sci-fi world of the 1970sAs the 1960s drew to a close, and mankind trained its telescopes on other worlds, old conventions gave way to a new kind of hedonistic freedom that celebrated sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll. Derided as nerdy or dismissed as fluff, science fiction rarely gets credit for its catalyzing effect on this revolution.In Strange Stars, Jason Heller recasts sci-fi and pop music as parallel cultural forces that depended on one another to expand the horizons of books, music, and out-of-this-world imagery.In doing so, he presents a whole generation of revered musicians as the sci-fi-obsessed conjurers they really were: from Sun Ra lecturing on the black man in the cosmos, to Pink Floyd jamming live over the broadcast of the Apollo 11 moon landing; from a wave of Star Wars disco chart toppers and synthesiser-wielding post-punks, to Jimi Hendrix distilling the “purplish haze” he discovered in a pulp novel into psychedelic song. Of course, the whole scene was led by David Bowie, who hid in the balcony of a movie theater to watch 2001: A Space Odyssey, and came out a changed man…If today’s culture of Comic Con fanatics, superhero blockbusters, and classic sci-fi reboots has us thinking that the nerds have won at last, Strange Stars brings to life an era of unparalleled and unearthly creativity—in magazines, novels, films, records, and concerts—to point out that the nerds have been winning all along.
Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature
by Alva NoëA philosopher makes the case for thinking of works of art as tools for investigating ourselvesIn his new book, Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature, the philosopher and cognitive scientist Alva Noë raises a number of profound questions: What is art? Why do we value art as we do? What does art reveal about our nature? Drawing on philosophy, art history, and cognitive science, and making provocative use of examples from all three of these fields, Noë offers new answers to such questions. He also shows why recent efforts to frame questions about art in terms of neuroscience and evolutionary biology alone have been and will continue to be unsuccessful.
Strange Wonder: The Closure of Metaphysics and the Opening of Awe (Insurrections: Critical Studies in Religion, Politics, and Culture)
by Mary-Jane RubensteinStrange Wonder confronts Western philosophy's ambivalent relationship to the Platonic "wonder" that reveals the strangeness of the everyday. On the one hand, this wonder is said to be the origin of all philosophy. On the other hand, it is associated with a kind of ignorance that ought to be extinguished as swiftly as possible. By endeavoring to resolve wonder's indeterminacy into certainty and calculability, philosophy paradoxically secures itself at the expense of its own condition of possibility.Strange Wonder locates a reopening of wonder's primordial uncertainty in the work of Martin Heidegger, for whom wonder is first experienced as the shock at the groundlessness of things and then as an astonishment that things nevertheless are. Mary-Jane Rubenstein traces this double movement through the thought of Emmanuel Levinas, Jean-Luc Nancy, and Jacques Derrida, ultimately thematizing wonder as the awesome, awful opening that exposes thinking to devastation as well as transformation. Rubenstein's study shows that wonder reveals the extraordinary in and through the ordinary, and is therefore crucial to the task of reimagining political, religious, and ethical terrain.
Strange, Surprising, Sure: Essays in Uncommon Philosophy
by Robert Cummings NevilleIn Strange, Surprising, Sure, Robert Cummings Neville presents a theory of being, change, and value, and engages other philosophers who deal with these concepts. The book's central thesis is that the entire created world includes everything determinate, and thus the creator does not exist within creation. Strangely, this reverses nearly everything in the Western tradition. Surprisingly, this thesis is approached from a great many angles, all of which are within the Western, South Asian, or East Asian traditions. Surely put, this thesis will win out in the long run. Although Neville writes for an English-reading audience, he engages with thinkers from all these traditions."
Strangeness in Jacobean Drama (Studies in Performance and Early Modern Drama)
by Callan DaviesCallan Davies presents “strangeness” as a fresh critical paradigm for understanding the construction and performance of Jacobean drama—one that would have been deeply familiar to its playwrights and early audiences. This study brings together cultural analysis, philosophical enquiry, and the history of staged special effects to examine how preoccupation with the strange unites the verbal, visual, and philosophical elements of performance in works by Marston, Shakespeare, Middleton, Dekker, Heywood, and Beaumont and Fletcher. Strangeness in Jacobean Drama therefore offers an alternative model for understanding this important period of English dramatic history that moves beyond categories such as “Shakespeare’s late plays,” “tragicomedy,” or the home of cynical and bloodthirsty tragedies. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of early modern drama and philosophy, rhetorical studies, and the history of science and technology.
Stranger America: A Narrative Ethics of Exclusion (Cultural Frames, Framing Culture)
by Josh TothContradictory ideals of egalitarianism and self-reliance haunt America’s democratic state. We need look no further than Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and victory for proof that early twentieth-century anxieties about individualism, race, and the foreign or intrusive "other" persist today. In Stranger America, Josh Toth tracks and delineates these anxieties in America’s aesthetic production, finally locating a potential narrative strategy for circumnavigating them.Toth’s central focus is, simply, strangeness—or those characters who adamantly resist being fixed in any given category of identity. As with the theorists employed (Nancy, i ek, Derrida, Freud, Hegel), the subjects and literature considered are as encompassing as possible: from the work of Herman Melville, William Faulkner, James Weldon Johnson, and Nella Larsen to that of Philip K. Dick, Woody Allen, Larry David, and Bob Dylan; from the rise of nativism in the early twentieth century to object-oriented ontology and the twenty-first-century zombie craze; from ragtime and the introduction of sound in American cinema to the exhaustion of postmodern metafiction.Toth argues that American literature, music, film, and television can show us the path toward a new ethic, one in which we organize identity around the stranger rather than resorting to tactics of pure exclusion or inclusion. Ultimately, he provides a new narrative approach to otherness that seeks to realize a truly democratic form of community.
Stranger from Abroad: Hannah Arendt, Martin Heidegger, Friendship and Forgiveness
by Daniel Maier-KatkinTwo titans of twentieth-century thought: their lives, loves, ideas, and politics. Shaking up the content and method by which generations of students had studied Western philosophy, Martin Heidegger sought to ennoble man's existence in relation to death. Yet in a time of crisis, he sought personal advancement, becoming the most prominent German intellectual to join the Nazis. Hannah Arendt, his brilliant, beautiful student and young lover, sought to enable a decent society of human beings in relation to one other. She was courageous in the time of crisis. Years later, she was even able to meet Heidegger once again on common ground and to find in his past behavior an insight into Nazism that would influence her reflections on "the banality of evil"--a concept that remains bitterly controversial and profoundly influential to this day. But how could Arendt have renewed her friendship with Heidegger? And how has this relationship affected her reputation as a cultural critic? In Stranger from Abroad, Daniel Maier-Katkin offers a compassionate portrait that provides much-needed insight into this relationship. Maier-Katkin creates a detailed and riveting portrait of Arendt's rich intellectual and emotional life, shedding light on the unique bond she shared with her second husband, Heinrich Blücher, and on her friendships with Mary McCarthy, W. H. Auden, Karl Jaspers, and Randall Jarrell--all fascinating figures in their own right. An elegant, accessible introduction to Arendt's life and work, Stranger from Abroad makes a powerful and hopeful case for the lasting relevance of Arendt's thought.
Stranger in a Strange Land: Searching for Gershom Scholem and Jerusalem
by George ProchnikTaking his lead from his subject, Gershom Scholem—the 20th century thinker who cracked open Jewish theology and history with a radical reading of Kabbalah—Prochnik combines biography and memoir to counter our contemporary political crisis with an original and urgent reimagining of the future of Israel.In Stranger in a Strange Land, Prochnik revisits the life and work of Gershom Scholem, whose once prominent reputation, as a Freud-like interpreter of the inner world of the Cosmos, has been in eclipse in the United States. He vividly conjures Scholem’s upbringing in Berlin, and compellingly brings to life Scholem’s transformative friendship with Walter Benjamin, the critic and philosopher. In doing so, he reveals how Scholem’s frustration with the bourgeois ideology of Germany during the First World War led him to discover Judaism, Kabbalah, and finally Zionism, as potent counter-forces to Europe’s suicidal nationalism. Prochnik’s own years in the Holy Land in the 1990s brings him to question the stereotypical intellectual and theological constructs of Jerusalem, and to rediscover the city as a physical place, rife with the unruliness and fecundity of nature. Prochnik ultimately suggests that a new form of ecological pluralism must now inherit the historically energizing role once played by Kabbalah and Zionism in Jewish thought.