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Ways of Living Religion: Philosophical Investigations into Religious Experience
by null Christina M. GschwandtnerWays of Living Religion provides a philosophical analysis of different types of religious experience - ascetic, liturgical, monastic, mystical, devotional, compassionate, fundamentalist - that focuses on the lived experience of religion rather than reducing it to mere statements of belief or doctrine. Using phenomenology, Christina M. Gschwandtner distinguishes between different kinds of religious experiences by examining their central characteristics and defining features, as well as showing their continuity with human experience more broadly. The book is the first philosophical examination of several of these types, thus breaking new ground in philosophical thinking about religion. It is neither a confessional treatment nor a reduction of the lived experience to psychological or sociological phenomena. While Gschwandtner's treatment focuses on Christian forms of expression of these different types, it opens the path to broader examinations of ways of living religion that might enable scholars to give a more nuanced account of their similarities and differences.
The Ways of Reason: A Critical Study of the Ideas of Emile Meyerson
by Joseph LaLumiaFirst published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Ways of the Hand: The Organization of Improvised Conduct
by David SudnowThis is David Sudnow's classic account of how his hands learned to improvise jazz on the piano. David Sudnow is the author of Passing On and editor of Studies in Social Interaction. Since writing this book, he has developed a piano training method based on its insights.
Ways of Warriors, Codes of Kings: Lessons in Leadership from the Chinese Classics
by Thomas ClearyHere is a concise and user-friendly presentation of the ancient Chinese principles of leadership and strategy in the words of the masters themselves. Thomas Cleary has put together this collection of gems of wisdom from six of the great classics, including excerpts from his best-selling translation of The Art of War and other lesser-known but insightful texts.
The Ways We Think: From the Straits of Reason to the Possibilities of Thought (Journal of Philosophy of Education)
by Emma WilliamsThe Ways We Think critiques predominant approaches to the development of thinking in education and seeks to offer a new account of thought informed by phenomenology, post-structuralism and the ‘ordinary language’ philosophical traditions. Presents an original account of thinking for education and explores how this alternative conception of thought might be translated into the classroom Explores connections between phenomenology, post-structuralism and ordinary language philosophical traditions Examines the relevance of language in accounts of how we think Investigates the philosophical accounts of Gilbert Ryle, Martin Heidegger, John Austin and Jacques Derrida Draws upon experience of own teaching practice as philosopher-in-residence
Wayward Contracts: The Crisis of Political Obligation in England, 1640-1674
by Victoria KahnWhy did the language of contract become the dominant metaphor for the relationship between subject and sovereign in mid-seventeenth-century England? In Wayward Contracts, Victoria Kahn takes issue with the usual explanation for the emergence of contract theory in terms of the origins of liberalism, with its notions of autonomy, liberty, and equality before the law. Drawing on literature as well as political theory, state trials as well as religious debates, Kahn argues that the sudden prominence of contract theory was part of the linguistic turn of early modern culture, when government was imagined in terms of the poetic power to bring new artifacts into existence. But this new power also brought in its wake a tremendous anxiety about the contingency of obligation and the instability of the passions that induce individuals to consent to a sovereign power. In this wide-ranging analysis of the cultural significance of contract theory, the lover and the slave, the tyrant and the regicide, the fool and the liar emerge as some of the central, if wayward, protagonists of the new theory of political obligation. The result is must reading for students and scholars of early modern literature and early modern political theory, as well as historians of political thought and of liberalism.
Wayward Reproductions: Genealogies of Race and Nation in Transatlantic Modern Thought
by Alys Eve WeinbaumWayward Reproductions breaks apart and transfigures prevailing understandings of the interconnection among ideologies of racism, nationalism, and imperialism. Alys Eve Weinbaum demonstrates how these ideologies were founded in large part on what she calls "the race/reproduction bind"--the notion that race is something that is biologically reproduced. In revealing the centrality of ideas about women's reproductive capacity to modernity's intellectual foundations, Weinbaum highlights the role that these ideas have played in naturalizing oppression. She argues that attention to how the race/reproduction bind is perpetuated across national and disciplinary boundaries is a necessary part of efforts to combat racism. Gracefully traversing a wide range of discourses--including literature, evolutionary theory, early anthropology, Marxism, feminism, and psychoanalysis--Weinbaum traces a genealogy of the race/reproduction bind within key intellectual formations of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She examines two major theorists of genealogical thinking--Friedrich Nietzsche and Michel Foucault--and unearths the unacknowledged ways their formulations link race and reproduction. She explores notions of kinship and the replication of racial difference that run through Charlotte Perkins Gilman's work; Marxist thinking based on Friedrich Engel's The Origin of the Family; Charles Darwin's theory of sexual selection; and Sigmund Freud's early studies on hysteria. She also describes W. E. B. Du Bois's efforts to transcend ideas about the reproduction of race that underwrite citizenship and belonging within the United States. In a coda, Weinbaum brings the foregoing analysis to bear on recent genomic and biotechnological innovations.
We: Reviving Social Hope
by Ronald AronsonThe election of Donald Trump has exposed American society’s profound crisis of hope. By 2016 a generation of shrinking employment, rising inequality, the attack on public education, and the shredding of the social safety net, had set the stage for stunning insurgencies at opposite ends of the political spectrum. Against this dire background, Ronald Aronson offers an answer. He argues for a unique conception of social hope, one with the power for understanding and acting upon the present situation. Hope, he argues, is far more than a mood or feeling—it is the very basis of social will and political action. It is this kind of hope that Aronson sees brewing in the supporters of Bernie Sanders, who advocated the tough-minded and inspired disposition to act collectively to make the world more equal, more democratic, more peaceful, and more just. And it was directly contrasted by Trump’s supporters who showed a cynical and nostalgic faith in an authoritarian strongman replete with bigotry and misogyny. Beneath today’s crisis Aronson examines our heartbreaking story: a century of catastrophic violence and the bewildering ambiguity of progress—all of which have contributed to the evaporation of social hope. As he shows, we are now in a time when hope is increasingly privatized, when—despite all the ways we are connected to each other—we are desperately alone, struggling to weather the maelstrom around us, demoralized by the cynicism that permeates our culture and politics, and burdened with finding personal solutions to social problems. Yet, Aronson argues, even at a time when false hopes are rife, social hope still persists. Carefully exploring what we mean when we say we “hope” and teasing hope apart from its dangerously misconstrued sibling, “progress,” he locates seeds of real change. He argues that always underlying our experience—even if we completely ignore it—is the fact of our social belonging, and that this can be reactivated into a powerful collective force, an active we. He looks to various political movements, from the massive collective force of environmentalists to the movements around Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn, as powerful examples of socially energized, politically determined, and actionably engaged forms of hope. Even in this age of Donald Trump, the result is an illuminating and inspiring call that anyone can clearly hear: we can still create a better future for everyone, but only if we resist false hopes and act together.
We All Have Different Abilities
by Melissa HigginsWhat can you do? Tie your shoes? Play piano? Everyone has different talents and abilities. Let's share and celebrate our many talents
We Are All Cannibals: And Other Essays
by Maurice Olender Jane Marie Todd Claude Levi-StraussOn Christmas Eve 1951, Santa Claus was hanged and then publicly burned outside of the Cathedral of Dijon in France. That same decade, ethnologists began to study the indigenous cultures of central New Guinea, and found men and women affectionately consuming the flesh of the ones they loved. "Everyone calls what is not their own custom barbarism," said Montaigne. In these essays, Claude Lévi-Strauss shows us behavior that is bizarre, shocking, and even revolting to outsiders but consistent with a people's culture and context.These essays relate meat eating to cannibalism, female circumcision to medically assisted reproduction, and mythic thought to scientific thought. They explore practices of incest and patriarchy, nature worship versus man-made material obsessions, the perceived threat of art in various cultures, and the innovations and limitations of secular thought. Lévi-Strauss measures the short distance between "complex" and "primitive" societies and finds a shared madness in the ways we enact myth, ritual, and custom. Yet he also locates a pure and persistent ethics that connects the center of Western civilization to far-flung societies and forces a reckoning with outmoded ideas of morality and reason.
We Are All Equal: Student Culture and Identity at a Mexican Secondary School, 1988-1998
by Bradley A. U. LevinsonWe Are All Equal is the first full-length ethnography of a Mexican secondary school available in English. Bradley A. U. Levinson observes student life at a provincial Mexican junior high, often drawing on poignant and illuminating interviews, to study how the the school's powerful emphasis on equality, solidarity, and group unity dissuades the formation of polarized peer groups and affects students' eventual life trajectories. Exploring how students develop a cultural "game of equality" that enables them to identify--across typical class and social boundaries--with their peers, the school, and the nation, Levinson considers such issues as the organizational and discursive resources that students draw on to maintain this culture. He also engages cultural studies, media studies, and globalization theory to examine the impact of television, music, and homelife on the students and thereby better comprehend--and problematize--the educational project of the state. Finding that an ethic of solidarity is sometimes used to condemn students defined as different or uncooperative and that little attention is paid to accommodating the varied backgrounds of the students--including their connection to indigenous, peasant, or working class identities--Levinson reveals that their "schooled identity" often collapses in the context of migration to the United States or economic crisis in Mexico. Finally, he extends his study to trace whether the cultural game is reinforced or eroded after graduation as well as its influence relative to the forces of family, traditional gender roles, church, and global youth culture. We Are All Equal will be of particular interest to educators, sociologists, Latin Americanists, and anthropologists.
We Are All Migrants: Political Action and the Ubiquitous Condition of Migrant-hood
by Gregory FeldmanNow more than ever, questions of citizenship, migration, and political action dominate public debate. In this powerful and polemical book, Gregory Feldman argues that We Are All Migrants. By challenging the division between those considered "citizens" and "migrants," Feldman shows that both subjects confront disempowerment, uncertainty, and atomization inseparable from the rise of mass society, the isolation of the laboring individual, and the global proliferation of rationalized practices of security and production. Yet, this very atomization--the ubiquitous condition of migrant-hood--pushes the individual to ask an existential and profoundly political question: "do I matter in this world?" Feldman argues that for particular individuals to answer this question affirmatively, they must be empowered to jointly constitute the places they inhabit with others. Feldman ultimately argues that to overcome the condition of migrant-hood, people must be empowered to constitute their own sovereign spaces from their particular standpoints. Rather than base these spaces on categorical types of people, these spaces emerge only as particular people present themselves to each other while questioning how they should inhabit it.
We Are All Stardust: Scientists Who Shaped Our World Talk about Their Work, Their Lives, and What They Still Want to Know
by Ross Benjamin Stefan Klein“What distinguishes scientists, in your eyes?”—Stefan Klein“First and foremost, curiosity.”—Roald Hoffmann, Nobel Prize–winning chemistWhen Stefan Klein, an acclaimed journalist, sits down to talk with 18 of the world’s leading scientists, he finds they’re driven by, above all, curiosity. When they talk about their work, they turn to what’s next, to what they still hope to discover. And they see inspiration everywhere: From the sports car that physicist Steven Weinberg says helped him on his quest for “the theory of everything” to the jazz musicians who gave psychologist Alison Gopnik new insight into raising children, they reveal how their paradigm-changing work entwines with their lives outside the lab. We hear from extraordinary natural and social scientists, including:Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins on ego and selflessnessPrimatologist Jane Goodall on chimpanzee behaviorNeuroscientist V. S. Ramachandran on consciousnessGeographer Jared Diamond on chance in historyAnthropologist Sarah Hrdy on motherhoodAnd cosmologist Martin Rees on how “ultimately we ourselves are stardust.”
We Are Electric: Inside the 200-Year Hunt for Our Body's Bioelectric Code, and What the Future Holds
by Sally AdeeScience journalist Sally Adee breaks open the field of bioelectricity—the electric currents that run through our bodies and every living thing—its misunderstood history, and why new discoveries will lead to new ways around antibiotic resistance, cleared arteries, and new ways to combat cancer. You may be familiar with the idea of our body's biome: the bacterial fauna that populate our gut and can so profoundly affect our health. In We Are Electric we cross into new scientific understanding: discovering your body's electrome. Every cell in our bodies—bones, skin, nerves, muscle—has a voltage, like a tiny battery. It is the reason our brain can send signals to the rest of our body, how we develop in the womb, and why our body knows to heal itself from injury. When bioelectricity goes awry, illness, deformity, and cancer can result. But if we can control or correct this bioelectricity, the implications for our health are remarkable: an undo switch for cancer that could flip malignant cells back into healthy ones; the ability to regenerate cells, organs, even limbs; to slow aging and so much more. The next scientific frontier might be decrypting the bioelectric code, much the way we did the genetic code. Yet the field is still emerging from two centuries of skepticism and entanglement with medical quackery, all stemming from an 18th-century scientific war about the nature of electricity between Luigi Galvani (father of bioelectricity, famous for shocking frogs) and Alessandro Volta (inventor of the battery). In We Are Electric, award-winning science writer Sally Adee takes readers through the thrilling history of bioelectricity and into the future: from the Victorian medical charlatans claiming to use electricity to cure everything from paralysis to diarrhea, to the advances helped along by the giant axons of squids, and finally to the brain implants and electric drugs that await us—and the moral implications therein. The bioelectric revolution starts here.
We Are Free to Change the World: Hannah Arendt's Lessons in Love and Disobedience
by Lyndsey StonebridgeA timely guide on how to live—and think—through the challenges of our century drawn from the life and thought of political theorist Hannah Arendt, one of the twentieth century&’s foremost opponents of totalitarianism&“We are free to change the world and to start something new in it.&”—Hannah ArendtThe violent unease of today&’s world would have been familiar to Hannah Arendt. Tyranny, occupation, disenchantment, post-truth politics, conspiracy theories, racism, mass migration: She lived through them all.Born in the first decade of the last century, she escaped fascist Europe to make a new life for herself in America, where she became one of its most influential—and controversial—public intellectuals. She wrote about power and terror, exile and love, and above all, about freedom. Questioning—thinking—was her first defense against tyranny. She advocated a politics of action and plurality, courage and, when necessary, disobedience.We Are Free to Change the World is a book about the Arendt we need for the twenty-first century. It tells us how and why Arendt came to think the way she did, and how to think when our own politics goes off the rails. Both a guide to Arendt&’s life and work, and its dialogue with our troubled present, We Are Free to Change the World is an urgent call for us to think, as Hannah Arendt did—unflinchingly, lovingly, and defiantly—through our own unpredictable times.
We Are Not Born Submissive: How Patriarchy Shapes Women's Lives
by Manon GarciaA philosophical exploration of female submission, using insights from feminist thinkers—especially Simone de Beauvoir—to reveal the complexities of women’s reality and lived experienceWhat role do women play in the perpetuation of patriarchy? On the one hand, popular media urges women to be independent, outspoken, and career-minded. Yet, this same media glorifies a specific, sometimes voluntary, female submissiveness as a source of satisfaction. In philosophy, even less has been said on why women submit to men and the discussion has been equally contradictory—submission has traditionally been considered a vice or pathology, but female submission has been valorized as innate to women’s nature. Is there a way to explore female submission in all of its complexity—not denying its appeal in certain instances, and not buying into an antifeminist, sexist, or misogynistic perspective?We Are Not Born Submissive offers the first in-depth philosophical exploration of female submission, focusing on the thinking of Simone de Beauvoir, and more recent work in feminist philosophy, epistemology, and political theory. Manon Garcia argues that to comprehend female submission, we must invert how we examine power and see it from the woman’s point of view. Historically, philosophers, psychoanalysts, and even some radical feminists have conflated femininity and submission. Garcia demonstrates that only through the lens of women’s lived experiences—their economic, social, and political situations—and how women adapt their preferences to maintain their own well-being, can we understand the ways in which gender hierarchies in society shape women’s experiences. Ultimately, she asserts that women do not actively choose submission. Rather, they consent to—and sometimes take pleasure in—what is prescribed to them through social norms within a patriarchy.Moving beyond the simplistic binary of natural destiny or moral vice, We Are Not Born Submissive takes a sophisticated look at how female submissiveness can be explained.
We Are the Economy: The Buddhist Way of Work, Consumption, and Money
by Kai RomhardtA no-nonsense Zen approach to our economic realities can change everything and help us regain our freedom. Is it possible to be personally fulfilled, and also make a difference within our current financial system? If you're skeptical, business coach and Zen practitioner Kai Romhardt proposes a minimalist, awareness-based strategy that totally reconfigures our core economic relationships: work, consumption, and money.How do we do that? We need to pause, breathe, and get in touch with our true intentions. Too often, we think of the economy as something outside of us, as beyond the scope of our individual choices. We're unhappy with how things are going, with unthinking growth that polarizes our world and condenses wealth at the top, but we don't know what to do. Romhardt argues that individuals who wield a sharp Buddhist mindset can, in fact, create change through personal decisions: when we can see in to society, and in to our constructs, we become empowered to choose deeply real and purposeful lives.
We Are the Leaders We Have Been Looking For (The W. E. B. Du Bois Lectures)
by Eddie Glaude Jr.From the author of the New York Times bestseller Begin Again, a politically astute, lyrical meditation on how ordinary people can shake off their reliance on a small group of professional politicians and assume responsibility for what it takes to achieve a more just and perfect democracy.“Like attending a jazz concert with all of one’s favorite musicians…James Baldwin, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Ella Baker, Toni Morrison, and more…Glaude brilliantly takes us on an epic tour through their lives and work.”―Henry Louis Gates, Jr., author of The Black Box: Writing the RaceWe are more than the circumstances of our lives, and what we do matters. In We Are the Leaders We Have Been Looking For, one of the nation’s preeminent scholars and a New York Times bestselling author, Eddie S. Glaude Jr., makes the case that the hard work of becoming a better person should be a critical feature of Black politics. Through virtuoso interpretations of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and Ella Baker, Glaude shows how we have the power to be the heroes that our democracy so desperately requires.Based on the Du Bois Lectures delivered at Harvard University, the book begins with Glaude’s unease with the Obama years. He felt then, and does even more urgently now, that the excitement around the Obama presidency constrained our politics as we turned to yet another prophet-like figure. He examines his personal history and the traditions that both shape and overwhelm his own voice.Glaude weaves anecdotes about his evolving views on Black politics together with the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Dewey, Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, and Ralph Ellison, encouraging us to reflect on the lessons of these great thinkers and address imaginatively the challenges of our day in voices uniquely our own.Narrated with passion and philosophical intensity, this book is a powerful reminder that if American democracy is to survive, we must step out from under the shadows of past giants to build a better society—one that derives its strength from the pew, not the pulpit.
We Built a Village: Cohousing and the Commons
by Diane Rothbard MargolisDescribes the development of one of the first cohousing communities in the U.S. offering a social understanding of its commons.Cohousing, a form of communal living that clusters around shared common space, began about a half century ago in Denmark. We Built a Village describes the process of planning and building of an early cohousing community in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the way the people involved simultaneously built their homes and their social structure. As both a memoir and a sociological analysis that probes the differences between commons and markets, it is unique among books about cohousing. When this group of people began in the late 1990s to construct their cohousing community, they set in motion a counterpoint between the physical spaces and the social configurations that would guide their lives together, even up to creative responses to the recent pandemic.
We Can Do Better Than This: An urgent manifesto for how we can shape a better world for LGBTQ+ people
by Beth Ditto Owen Jones Peppermint Olly Alexander Wolfgang Tillmans Phyll Opoku-GyimahHow do we shape a better world for LGBTQ+ people? Olly Alexander, Peppermint, Owen Jones, Beth Ditto, Shon Faye and more share their stories and visions for the future.'A vital addition to your bookshelf' Stylist, 5 Books for Summer'Captivating... A must-read' Gay Times, Books of the YearIn We Can Do Better Than This, 35 voices - actors, musicians, writers, artists and activists - answer this vital question, at a time when the queer community continues to suffer discrimination and extreme violence. Through deeply moving stories and provocative new arguments on safety and visibility, dating and gender, care and community, they present a powerful manifesto for how - together - we can change lives everywhere.'Powerful, inspiring...urgent' Attitude'Read and be inspired' Peter Tatchell'Illuminating' Paul Mendez, author of Rainbow Milk'Friendly and fierce' Jeremy Atherton Lin, author of Gay Bar
We Cannot Escape History: States and Revolutions
by Neil DavidsonNeil Davidson explores classic themes of nation, state, and revolution in this collection of essays. Ranging from the extent to which nationalism can be a component of led-wing politics to the difference between bourgeois and socialist revolutions, the book concludes with an extended discussion of the different meanings history has for conservatives, radicals, and Marxists.
We Cannot Remain Silent: Opposition to the Brazilian Military Dictatorship in the United States
by James N. GreenIn 1964, Brazil's democratically elected, left-wing government was ousted in a coup and replaced by a military junta. The Johnson administration quickly recognized the new government. The U. S. press and members of Congress were nearly unanimous in their support of the "revolution" and the coup leaders' anticommunist agenda. Few Americans were aware of the human rights abuses perpetrated by Brazil's new regime. By 1969, a small group of academics, clergy, Brazilian exiles, and political activists had begun to educate the American public about the violent repression in Brazil and mobilize opposition to the dictatorship. By 1974, most informed political activists in the United States associated the Brazilian government with its torture chambers. In We Cannot Remain Silent, James N. Green analyzes the U. S. grassroots activities against torture in Brazil, and the ways those efforts helped to create a new discourse about human-rights violations in Latin America. He explains how the campaign against Brazil's dictatorship laid the groundwork for subsequent U. S. movements against human rights abuses in Chile, Uruguay, Argentina, and Central America. Green interviewed many of the activists who educated journalists, government officials, and the public about the abuses taking place under the Brazilian dictatorship. Drawing on those interviews and archival research from Brazil and the United States, he describes the creation of a network of activists with international connections, the documentation of systematic torture and repression, and the cultivation of Congressional allies and the press. Those efforts helped to expose the terror of the dictatorship and undermine U. S. support for the regime. Against the background of the political and social changes of the 1960s and 1970s, Green tells the story of a decentralized, international grassroots movement that effectively challenged U. S. foreign policy.
We Demand: The University and Student Protests
by Roderick A. FergusonThis title is part of American Studies Now and available as an e-book first. Visit ucpress.edu/go/americanstudiesnow to learn more. In the post–World War II period, students rebelled against the archaic university. In student-led movements, they fought for the new kinds of public the university needed to serve—women, minorities, immigrants, indigenous people, and more—with a success that had a profound impact on the intellectual landscape of the twentieth century. Because of their efforts, ethnic studies, women’s studies, and American studies were born, and minority communities have become more visible and important to academic debate. Less than fifty years since this pivotal shift in the academy, however, the university is fighting back. In We Demand, Roderick A. Ferguson shows how the university, particularly the public university, is moving away from “the people” in all their diversity. As more resources are put toward STEM education, humanities and interdisciplinary programs are being cut and shuttered. This has had a devastating effect on the pursuit of knowledge, and on interdisciplinary programs born from the hard work and effort of an earlier generation. This is not only a reactionary move against the social advances since the ’60s and ’70s, but part of the larger threat of anti-intellectualism in the United States.
We Fight Fascists: The 43 Group and Their Forgotten Battle for Post-war Britain
by Daniel SonabendThe extraordinary story of the Jewish ex-servicemen fighting fascism in post-war BritainReturning to civilian life, at the close of the Second World War, a group of Jewish veterans discovered that, for all their effort and sacrifice, their fight was not yet done. Creeping back onto the streets were Britain&’s homegrown fascists, directed from the shadows by Sir Oswald Mosley. Horrified that the authorities refused to act, forty-three Jewish exservicemen and women resolved to take matters into their own hands. In 1946, they founded the 43 Group and let it be known that they were willing to stop the far-right resurgence by any means necessary. Their numbers quickly swelled. Joining the battlehardened ex-servicemen in smashing up fascist meetings were younger Jews, including hairdresser Vidal Sassoon, and gentiles as well, some of whom volunteered to infiltrate fascist organisations. The Group published its own newspaper, conducted covert operations, and was able to muster a powerful force of hundreds of fighters who quickly turned fascist street meetings into mass brawls. The struggle peaked in the summer of 1947 with the Battle of Ridley Road, where thousands descended on the Hackney market to participate in weekly riots. The history of the 43 Group is not just a gripping story of a forgotten moment in Britain&’s post-war history; it is also a timely lesson in how to confront fascism—and how to win.