- Table View
- List View
Awakening: An Introduction to the History of Eastern Thought
by Patrick S. BresnanAwakening: An Introduction to the History of Eastern Thought provides the reader with a thorough and valuable overview of the historical development of the major Eastern religious and philosophical traditions, primarily in India, China, and Japan. The book is written in an engaging style that contains a variety of anecdotes, analogies, definitions, and supporting quotes from primary and secondary sources. Awakening helps the reader to recognize the interrelationships that exist among the various traditions, to appreciate the relevance of these traditions to the concerns of modern times, and to understand the major issues of interpretation regarding these traditions. The primary focus of Awakening is Hinduism and Buddhism, and they serve as the broad umbrellas that include a number of specific schools, each of which is treated individually. Other schools–such as Confucianism, Daoism, and Shinto–are included at the appropriate place. Awakening is for all students and interested readers, whether new to the study of Eastern thought or not. New to the Seventh Edition:- A new Introduction- A clearer definition and explanation of "Yoga" (throughout Part 1)- A rewrite of the Aryan Migration section in Chapter 1, bringing it in line with current research- An added sub-chapter to Chapter 6, dealing with Kundalini Yoga- Further clarification of the meaning of Anatman in Chapter 10- Emphasis on the contribution of Daoism to Chan Buddhism- Clearer presentation of the Life of Buddha (Legend vs. Reality)- Updated Study Questions- Two new videos added to the companion website Key Features:- An historical overview that attempts to show the development of Eastern philosophies, both within the individual traditions as well as within a broad but loosely unified system of thought- Abundantly uses stories in chapter overviews to engage student readers and to better explain Eastern thought- No background in Asian studies, philosophy, or religious studies is presumed, allowing any student to greatly benefit from reading this book- A functional, visually attractive web site www.patrickbresnan.com with author-produced videos on the content of the book, scores of pictures, and a comprehensive section on meditation
The Awakening: A History of the Western Mind AD 500 - 1700
by Charles FreemanA monumental and exhilarating history of European thought, from the fall of Rome in the fifth century AD to the Scientific Revolution thirteen centuries later. The Awakening traces the recovery and refashioning of Europe's classical heritage from the ruins of the Roman Empire. The process of preservation of surviving texts, fragile at first, was strengthened under the Christian empire founded by Charlemagne in the eighth century; later, during the High Middle Ages, universities were founded and the study of philosophy was revived. Renewed interest in ancient Greek and Roman thought provided the intellectual impetus for the Renaissance of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, whose ideas – aesthetic, political and scientific – were disseminated across Europe by the invention of the printing press. Equally momentous was Europe's encounter with the New World, and the resulting maritime supremacy which conferred global reach on Europe's merchants and colonists. Vivid in detail and informed by the latest scholarship, The Awakening is powered not by the fate of kings or the clash of arms but by deeper currents of thought, inquiry and discovery, which first recover and then surpass the achievements of classical antiquity, and lead the West to the threshold of the Age of Reason. Charles Freeman takes the reader on an enthralling journey, and provides us with a vital key to understanding the world we live in today.Praise for The Awakening: 'The subject of this stimulating and erudite book is nothing less than the development of the Western mind from the demise of classical civilisation in the fifth century AD, through the Middle Ages and Renaissance, to the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century. The Awakening is a work of serious scholarship by an author who has clearly been everywhere, seen everything and read voraciously. But it is also a work written with great elan and, given its scope, undertaken with considerable courage... An arrestingly clear design, combined with numerous judiciously chosen illustrations, completes an extraordinary achievement' Christopher Lloyd, Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures, 1988-2005'The Awakening recounts the slow evolution of Western thought that restored legitimacy to independent examination and analysis, that eventually led to a celebration, albeit a cautious one, of reason over blind faith. In the process, Freeman reminds us that quality, engaging narrative history has not gone extinct, while demonstrating that it is possible to produce a work that is so well-written it is readable by a general audience while meeting the rigorous standards of scholarship demanded by academia' Stan Prager'The Awakening is a very timely book and an excellently written and produced one. Freeman is a good host, a superb narrator and tells his story with aplomb... His elegant prose is a treat for the mind and the accompanying illuminations a treat for the eye' International Times
Awakening and Insight: Zen Buddhism and Psychotherapy
by Polly Young-Eisendrath Shoji MuramotoBuddhism first came to the West many centuries ago through the Greeks, who also influenced some of the culture and practices of Indian Buddhism. As Buddhism has spread beyond India, it has always been affected by the indigenous traditions of its new homes. When Buddhism appeared in America and Europe in the 1950s and 1960s, it encountered contemporary psychology and psychotherapy, rather than religious traditions. Since the 1990s, many efforts have been made by Westerners to analyze and integrate the similarities and differences between Buddhism and it therapeutic ancestors, particularly Jungian psychology. Taking Japanese Zen-Buddhism as its starting point, this volume is a collection of critiques, commentaries, and histories about a particular meeting of Buddhism and psychology. It is based on the Zen Buddhism and Psychotherapy conference that took place in Kyoto, Japan, in 1999, expanded by additional papers, and includes: new perspectives on Buddhism and psychology, East and West cautions and insights about potential confusions traditional ideas in a new light. It also features a new translation of the conversation between Schin'ichi Hisamatsu and Carl Jung which took place in 1958. Awakening and Insight expresses a meeting of minds, Japanese and Western, in a way that opens new questions about and sheds new light on our subjective lives. It will be of great interest to students, scholars and practitioners of psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, and analytical psychology, as well as anyone involved in Zen Buddhism.
Awakening and Insight: Zen Buddhism and Psychotherapy
by Polly Young-Eisendrath Shoji MuramotoBuddhism first came to the West many centuries ago through the Greeks, who also influenced some of the culture and practices of Indian Buddhism. As Buddhism has spread beyond India, it has always been affected by the indigenous traditions of its new homes. When Buddhism appeared in America and Europe in the 1950s and 1960s, it encountered contemporary psychology and psychotherapy, rather than religious traditions. Since the 1990s, many efforts have been made by Westerners to analyze and integrate the similarities and differences between Buddhism and it therapeutic ancestors, particularly Jungian psychology. Taking Japanese Zen-Buddhism as its starting point, this volume is a collection of critiques, commentaries, and histories about a particular meeting of Buddhism and psychology. It is based on the Zen Buddhism and Psychotherapy conference that took place in Kyoto, Japan, in 1999, expanded by additional papers, and includes: new perspectives on Buddhism and psychology, East and West cautions and insights about potential confusions traditional ideas in a new light. It also features a new translation of the conversation between Schin'ichi Hisamatsu and Carl Jung which took place in 1958. Awakening and Insight expresses a meeting of minds, Japanese and Western, in a way that opens new questions about and sheds new light on our subjective lives. It will be of great interest to students, scholars and practitioners of psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, and analytical psychology, as well as anyone involved in Zen Buddhism.
Awakening Body Consciousness: Seven Steps to Integrating Body, Mind and Heart
by Patty de de LlosaHeartfelt, practical, accessible, spirited. Come alive to your Body Being the multi-faceted container that takes us everywhere we want to go and helps process everything that happens to us. Whether you wish to explore spiritual development, practice your own presence in the world, or simply live more richly, Awakening Body Consciousness was written for you. It links the teachings of scientist and sage, of Knowledge and Being, providing practical advice and exercises to help you cultivate a new level of body awareness. This seven-step path to vibrant physical, mental, and spiritual health unites body consciousness with the hearts own sense of truth and the minds best attention. Why seek spirit through the body? Because it is the nexus where soul and spirit connect with the ever-thrumming energy of life within us. Our DNA, our psyche, the hands that create and the minds that invent all are aspects of the living body and are dependent upon it. Awakening Body Consciousness combines ancient wisdom with cutting-edge science to reveal how our bodily presence, our sense of everyday presentness, can serve as a bridge toward the I-consciousness within us. Are we thinking animals? Are we minds dragging a body along behind us? What is mindfulness full of? Rooted in the authors decades of bodywork and studies of world religions and ritual practices, psychology and neuroscience, Awakening Body Consciousness forges a new path to developing conscious awareness. Through the practice of attention to our own presence-in-the-world, we are able to open ourselves to the experience of unity in body, mind and heart.
Awakening Body Consciousness: Seven Steps to Integrating Body, Mind and Heart
by Patty de de LlosaHeartfelt, practical, accessible, spirited. Come alive to your Body Being the multi-faceted container that takes us everywhere we want to go and helps process everything that happens to us. Whether you wish to explore spiritual development, practice your own presence in the world, or simply live more richly, Awakening Body Consciousness was written for you. It links the teachings of scientist and sage, of Knowledge and Being, providing practical advice and exercises to help you cultivate a new level of body awareness. This seven-step path to vibrant physical, mental, and spiritual health unites body consciousness with the hearts own sense of truth and the minds best attention. Why seek spirit through the body? Because it is the nexus where soul and spirit connect with the ever-thrumming energy of life within us. Our DNA, our psyche, the hands that create and the minds that invent all are aspects of the living body and are dependent upon it. Awakening Body Consciousness combines ancient wisdom with cutting-edge science to reveal how our bodily presence, our sense of everyday presentness, can serve as a bridge toward the I-consciousness within us. Are we thinking animals? Are we minds dragging a body along behind us? What is mindfulness full of? Rooted in the authors decades of bodywork and studies of world religions and ritual practices, psychology and neuroscience, Awakening Body Consciousness forges a new path to developing conscious awareness. Through the practice of attention to our own presence-in-the-world, we are able to open ourselves to the experience of unity in body, mind and heart.
The Awakening of Faith: The Classic Exposition of Mahayana Buddhism
by Teitaro Suzuki AsvaghosaComprehensive and coherent, this guide to a complex system of Buddhism is so authoritative that it has been employed in the instruction of Buddhist priests. Readers will find that it offers the keys to the essentials of Mahayana Buddhism, a liberal and theistic branch of the faith practiced chiefly in China and Japan.Translated by the distinguished scholar Teitaro Suzuki, the text discusses how humans can transcend their finite state to partake in the life of the infinite. Practices and techniques to assist believers in the awakening and growth of faith appear here, in addition to the most developed form of tathagata-garbha, or Buddha-matrix teachings.This accessible work was written specifically for those who prefer a brief and pithy presentation to extensive discourse.
Awakening Philosophy: The Loss of Truth
by Robert Elliott AllinsonIn this original book, Robert Elliott Allinson asserts that philosophers have been lulled into a dogmatic sleep by Immanuel Kant, the slayer of metaphysics, who has convinced them (and the rest of humanity) that we can never know Reality. Allinson awakens global philosophers from their sceptical slumbers by diagnosing the reason why they have abdicated their traditional calling as leaders of inquiry into truth and wisdom.
Awakening Somatic Intelligence: Understanding, Learning & Practicing the Alexander Technique, Feldenkrais Method & Hatha Yoga
by Graeme LynnFocussing on distinct body practice from a range of different methods, Graeme Lynn demonstrates how to use the physical body to encourage general health and wellbeing. Starting with the fundamental concepts of movement to more advanced practice, this book will serve as a comprehensive guide to developing the physical body to transform the quality of movement, and bring greater pleasure and effectiveness into every action. Specific lessons include The Alexander Technique, The Feldenkrais Method, and Hatha Yoga. Describing the core benefits of these methods, why they complement each other and how to use them, this is essential reading for students and practitioners of somatic methods as well as anyone interested in learning new ways to optimise health and wellbeing.
Awakening Somatic Intelligence: Understanding, Learning & Practicing the Alexander Technique, Feldenkrais Method & Hatha Yoga (PDF)
by Graeme LynnFocussing on distinct body practice from a range of different methods, Graeme Lynn demonstrates how to use the physical body to encourage general health and wellbeing. Starting with the fundamental concepts of movement to more advanced practice, this book will serve as a comprehensive guide to developing the physical body to transform the quality of movement, and bring greater pleasure and effectiveness into every action. Specific lessons include The Alexander Technique, The Feldenkrais Method, and Hatha Yoga. Describing the core benefits of these methods, why they complement each other and how to use them, this is essential reading for students and practitioners of somatic methods as well as anyone interested in learning new ways to optimise health and wellbeing.
Awakening the Miracle of You: Affirmations for your life
by Judith CollinsAwakening the Miracle of You contains inspiring affirmations to help you through all sorts of life circumstances, both positive and challenging. The book also contains a 52-week course of affirmations to give you guidance.Affirmations are a great alternative for people who know they want to meditate - or have been told they should meditate - but know that meditation doesn't suit them. Affirmations can create the same sense of the present moment, and of mindfulness, as meditation. They can be recited silently in any place at any time, whereas meditation is something best performed in silence and away from others.This inspiring book will develop your ability to overcome life's challenges. The skilfully crafted affirmations will help you deal positively with situations such as career change, pain management, stress relief, fear and mourning.If you are seeking long-term self-awareness and growth, Awakening the Miracle of You also contains a 52-week self-development program. By working through the readings, you will clearly identify the cause of negativity and draw on your inner reservoir of hope to feel a sense of wholeness, direction and spiritual evolution.
Awakening to China's Rise: European Foreign and Security Policies toward the People's Republic of China
by Hugo MeijerAwakening to China's Rise provides the most comprehensive analysis to date of how Europe's major powers have responded to the re-emergence of China as a great power in world politics since the end of the Cold War. To do so, it puts forward a unique cross-regional comparison of how the major European powers (France, Germany and the United Kingdom) have confronted Chinese assertiveness both in the Asia-Pacific and in Europe. Firstly, it analyses their response to China's increasingly muscular regional posture in the Asia-Pacific through the development of diplomatic and security initiatives with partners in the region. Secondly, it delineates how they have confronted China's inroads into Europe, looking at the measures that they have taken to tackle Chinese investments in, and supply of, technologies in strategic sectors such as critical national infrastructures, dual-use technologies, and in the digital domain, including Huawei's 5G networks. A longstanding assumption in the IR literature has been that European foreign policies toward the People's Republic of China have been driven by a 'naïve' and self-interested focus on the economic opportunities presented by such a vast market, overlooking security considerations. This book challenges such common belief through a detailed examination of the policies of France, Germany and the United Kingdom from 1989 to the present. Its central argument is that, whereas this assessment aptly characterized the first two post-Cold War decades, Beijing's growing assertiveness after 2009 caused the three major European powers to awaken to China's rise. In the 2010s, heightened threat perceptions of China, coupled with increasingly competitive bilateral economic relations with the PRC, have gradually and cumulatively caused the hardening of their policy goals which, in turn, translated into the formulation of new policy instruments to confront such a challenge. To substantiate this argument, the book relies on a large body of previously undisclosed primary sources, including: 223 interviews conducted with senior officials in Europe (Berlin, Brussels, London, Paris), in the United States (Washington DC), and in Asia (Beijing, Shanghai, New Delhi, Seoul); declassified archival documents from France, the UK and Germany; leaked US diplomatic cables; and new data on European naval deployments.
Awakening to China's Rise: European Foreign and Security Policies toward the People's Republic of China
by Hugo MeijerAwakening to China's Rise provides the most comprehensive analysis to date of how Europe's major powers have responded to the re-emergence of China as a great power in world politics since the end of the Cold War. To do so, it puts forward a unique cross-regional comparison of how the major European powers (France, Germany and the United Kingdom) have confronted Chinese assertiveness both in the Asia-Pacific and in Europe. Firstly, it analyses their response to China's increasingly muscular regional posture in the Asia-Pacific through the development of diplomatic and security initiatives with partners in the region. Secondly, it delineates how they have confronted China's inroads into Europe, looking at the measures that they have taken to tackle Chinese investments in, and supply of, technologies in strategic sectors such as critical national infrastructures, dual-use technologies, and in the digital domain, including Huawei's 5G networks. A longstanding assumption in the IR literature has been that European foreign policies toward the People's Republic of China have been driven by a 'naïve' and self-interested focus on the economic opportunities presented by such a vast market, overlooking security considerations. This book challenges such common belief through a detailed examination of the policies of France, Germany and the United Kingdom from 1989 to the present. Its central argument is that, whereas this assessment aptly characterized the first two post-Cold War decades, Beijing's growing assertiveness after 2009 caused the three major European powers to awaken to China's rise. In the 2010s, heightened threat perceptions of China, coupled with increasingly competitive bilateral economic relations with the PRC, have gradually and cumulatively caused the hardening of their policy goals which, in turn, translated into the formulation of new policy instruments to confront such a challenge. To substantiate this argument, the book relies on a large body of previously undisclosed primary sources, including: 223 interviews conducted with senior officials in Europe (Berlin, Brussels, London, Paris), in the United States (Washington DC), and in Asia (Beijing, Shanghai, New Delhi, Seoul); declassified archival documents from France, the UK and Germany; leaked US diplomatic cables; and new data on European naval deployments.
Awakening to Race: Individualism and Social Consciousness in America
by Jack TurnerThe election of America’s first black president has led many to believe that race is no longer a real obstacle to success and that remaining racial inequality stems largely from the failure of minority groups to take personal responsibility for seeking out opportunities. Often this argument is made in the name of the long tradition of self-reliance and American individualism. In Awakening to Race, Jack Turner upends this view, arguing that it expresses not a deep commitment to the values of individualism, but a narrow understanding of them. Drawing on the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Frederick Douglass, Ralph Ellison, and James Baldwin, Turner offers an original reconstruction of democratic individualism in American thought. All these thinkers, he shows, held that personal responsibility entails a refusal to be complicit in injustice and a duty to combat the conditions and structures that support it. At a time when individualism is invoked as a reason for inaction, Turner makes the individualist tradition the basis of a bold and impassioned case for race consciousness—consciousness of the ways that race continues to constrain opportunity in America. Turner’s “new individualism” becomes the grounds for concerted public action against racial injustice.
Awakening to Race: Individualism and Social Consciousness in America
by Jack TurnerThe election of America’s first black president has led many to believe that race is no longer a real obstacle to success and that remaining racial inequality stems largely from the failure of minority groups to take personal responsibility for seeking out opportunities. Often this argument is made in the name of the long tradition of self-reliance and American individualism. In Awakening to Race, Jack Turner upends this view, arguing that it expresses not a deep commitment to the values of individualism, but a narrow understanding of them. Drawing on the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Frederick Douglass, Ralph Ellison, and James Baldwin, Turner offers an original reconstruction of democratic individualism in American thought. All these thinkers, he shows, held that personal responsibility entails a refusal to be complicit in injustice and a duty to combat the conditions and structures that support it. At a time when individualism is invoked as a reason for inaction, Turner makes the individualist tradition the basis of a bold and impassioned case for race consciousness—consciousness of the ways that race continues to constrain opportunity in America. Turner’s “new individualism” becomes the grounds for concerted public action against racial injustice.
Awakening to Race: Individualism and Social Consciousness in America
by Jack TurnerThe election of America’s first black president has led many to believe that race is no longer a real obstacle to success and that remaining racial inequality stems largely from the failure of minority groups to take personal responsibility for seeking out opportunities. Often this argument is made in the name of the long tradition of self-reliance and American individualism. In Awakening to Race, Jack Turner upends this view, arguing that it expresses not a deep commitment to the values of individualism, but a narrow understanding of them. Drawing on the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Frederick Douglass, Ralph Ellison, and James Baldwin, Turner offers an original reconstruction of democratic individualism in American thought. All these thinkers, he shows, held that personal responsibility entails a refusal to be complicit in injustice and a duty to combat the conditions and structures that support it. At a time when individualism is invoked as a reason for inaction, Turner makes the individualist tradition the basis of a bold and impassioned case for race consciousness—consciousness of the ways that race continues to constrain opportunity in America. Turner’s “new individualism” becomes the grounds for concerted public action against racial injustice.
Awakening to Race: Individualism and Social Consciousness in America
by Jack TurnerThe election of America’s first black president has led many to believe that race is no longer a real obstacle to success and that remaining racial inequality stems largely from the failure of minority groups to take personal responsibility for seeking out opportunities. Often this argument is made in the name of the long tradition of self-reliance and American individualism. In Awakening to Race, Jack Turner upends this view, arguing that it expresses not a deep commitment to the values of individualism, but a narrow understanding of them. Drawing on the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Frederick Douglass, Ralph Ellison, and James Baldwin, Turner offers an original reconstruction of democratic individualism in American thought. All these thinkers, he shows, held that personal responsibility entails a refusal to be complicit in injustice and a duty to combat the conditions and structures that support it. At a time when individualism is invoked as a reason for inaction, Turner makes the individualist tradition the basis of a bold and impassioned case for race consciousness—consciousness of the ways that race continues to constrain opportunity in America. Turner’s “new individualism” becomes the grounds for concerted public action against racial injustice.
Awakening to Race: Individualism and Social Consciousness in America
by Jack TurnerThe election of America’s first black president has led many to believe that race is no longer a real obstacle to success and that remaining racial inequality stems largely from the failure of minority groups to take personal responsibility for seeking out opportunities. Often this argument is made in the name of the long tradition of self-reliance and American individualism. In Awakening to Race, Jack Turner upends this view, arguing that it expresses not a deep commitment to the values of individualism, but a narrow understanding of them. Drawing on the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Frederick Douglass, Ralph Ellison, and James Baldwin, Turner offers an original reconstruction of democratic individualism in American thought. All these thinkers, he shows, held that personal responsibility entails a refusal to be complicit in injustice and a duty to combat the conditions and structures that support it. At a time when individualism is invoked as a reason for inaction, Turner makes the individualist tradition the basis of a bold and impassioned case for race consciousness—consciousness of the ways that race continues to constrain opportunity in America. Turner’s “new individualism” becomes the grounds for concerted public action against racial injustice.
Awakening to Race: Individualism and Social Consciousness in America
by Jack TurnerThe election of America’s first black president has led many to believe that race is no longer a real obstacle to success and that remaining racial inequality stems largely from the failure of minority groups to take personal responsibility for seeking out opportunities. Often this argument is made in the name of the long tradition of self-reliance and American individualism. In Awakening to Race, Jack Turner upends this view, arguing that it expresses not a deep commitment to the values of individualism, but a narrow understanding of them. Drawing on the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Frederick Douglass, Ralph Ellison, and James Baldwin, Turner offers an original reconstruction of democratic individualism in American thought. All these thinkers, he shows, held that personal responsibility entails a refusal to be complicit in injustice and a duty to combat the conditions and structures that support it. At a time when individualism is invoked as a reason for inaction, Turner makes the individualist tradition the basis of a bold and impassioned case for race consciousness—consciousness of the ways that race continues to constrain opportunity in America. Turner’s “new individualism” becomes the grounds for concerted public action against racial injustice.
Awareness and the Substructure of Knowledge
by Paul Silva JrTo say that someone is aware of a fact is a commonplace expression, not at all a philosopher's term of art. It is often used to criticize, excuse, admonish, and inform others. Such uses of the expression presuppose the existence of a state of awareness that one can be in or fail to be in with regard to some fact. Here lies the phenomenon of factual awareness. It is conventional in epistemology to treat 'S is aware of the fact that p' as either expressing the same thought as 'S knows that p' or at least entailing it. Learning of the failure of conventional views is often both surprising and theoretically fruitful. This book presents a comprehensive case against the view that factual awareness just is knowledge or even essentially related to knowledge: factual awareness is not identical to, and it does not entail, knowing, being in a position to know, or being capable of knowing. It provides a systematic exploration of the relation between knowledge and factual awareness, arguing that knowledge is but one species of factual awareness and that we can understand the possession of objective reasons, the normativity of knowledge, and the nature of knowledge in terms of factual awareness. In this way, the state of factual awareness is, structurally and substantively, a more basic type of state than knowledge. If correct, this undermines a number of ways in which knowledge has been regarded as coming 'first' in recent epistemology.
Awareness and the Substructure of Knowledge
by Paul Silva JrTo say that someone is aware of a fact is a commonplace expression, not at all a philosopher's term of art. It is often used to criticize, excuse, admonish, and inform others. Such uses of the expression presuppose the existence of a state of awareness that one can be in or fail to be in with regard to some fact. Here lies the phenomenon of factual awareness. It is conventional in epistemology to treat 'S is aware of the fact that p' as either expressing the same thought as 'S knows that p' or at least entailing it. Learning of the failure of conventional views is often both surprising and theoretically fruitful. This book presents a comprehensive case against the view that factual awareness just is knowledge or even essentially related to knowledge: factual awareness is not identical to, and it does not entail, knowing, being in a position to know, or being capable of knowing. It provides a systematic exploration of the relation between knowledge and factual awareness, arguing that knowledge is but one species of factual awareness and that we can understand the possession of objective reasons, the normativity of knowledge, and the nature of knowledge in terms of factual awareness. In this way, the state of factual awareness is, structurally and substantively, a more basic type of state than knowledge. If correct, this undermines a number of ways in which knowledge has been regarded as coming 'first' in recent epistemology.
Awareness in Logic and Epistemology: A Conceptual Schema and Logical Study of The Underlying Main Epistemic Concepts (Logic, Epistemology, and the Unity of Science #52)
by Claudia Fernández-FernándezThis book creates a conceptual schema that acts as a correlation between Epistemology and Epistemic Logic. It connects both fields and offers a proper theoretical foundation for the contemporary developments of Epistemic Logic regarding the dynamics of information. It builds a bridge between the view of Awareness Justification Internalism, and a dynamic approach to Awareness Logic. The book starts with an introduction to the main topics in Epistemic Logic and Epistemology and reviews the disconnection between the two fields. It analyses three core notions representing the basic structure of the conceptual schema: “Epistemic Awareness”, “Knowledge” and “Justification”. Next, it presents the Explicit Aware Knowledge (EAK) Schema, using a diagram of three ellipses to illustrate the schema, and a formal model based on a neighbourhood-model structure, that shows one concrete application of the EAK-Schema into a logical structure. The book ends by presenting conclusions and final remarks about the uses and applications of the EAK-Schema. It shows that the most important feature of the schema is that it serves both as a theoretical correlate to the dynamic extensions of Awareness Logic, providing it with a philosophical background, and as an abstract conceptual structure for a re-interpretation of Epistemology.
An Awareness of What is Missing: Faith and Reason in a Post-secular Age
by Jürgen HabermasIn his recent writings on religion and secularization, Habermas has challenged reason to clarify its relation to religious experience and to engage religions in a constructive dialogue. Given the global challenges facing humanity, nothing is more dangerous than the refusal to communicate that we encounter today in different forms of religious and ideological fundamentalism. Habermas argues that in order to engage in this dialogue, two conditions must be met: religion must accept the authority of secular reason as the fallible results of the sciences and the universalistic egalitarianism in law and morality; and conversely, secular reason must not set itself up as the judge concerning truths of faith. This argument was developed in part as a reaction to the conception of the relation between faith and reason formulated by Pope Benedict XVI in his 2006 Regensburg address. In 2007 Habermas conducted a debate, under the title ‘An Awareness of What Is Missing', with philosophers from the Jesuit School for Philosophy in Munich. This volume includes Habermas's essay, the contributions of his interlocutors and Habermas's reply to them. It will be indispensable reading for anyone who wishes to understand one of the most urgent and intractable issues of our time.
An Awareness of What is Missing: Faith and Reason in a Post-secular Age
by Jürgen HabermasIn his recent writings on religion and secularization, Habermas has challenged reason to clarify its relation to religious experience and to engage religions in a constructive dialogue. Given the global challenges facing humanity, nothing is more dangerous than the refusal to communicate that we encounter today in different forms of religious and ideological fundamentalism. Habermas argues that in order to engage in this dialogue, two conditions must be met: religion must accept the authority of secular reason as the fallible results of the sciences and the universalistic egalitarianism in law and morality; and conversely, secular reason must not set itself up as the judge concerning truths of faith. This argument was developed in part as a reaction to the conception of the relation between faith and reason formulated by Pope Benedict XVI in his 2006 Regensburg address. In 2007 Habermas conducted a debate, under the title ‘An Awareness of What Is Missing', with philosophers from the Jesuit School for Philosophy in Munich. This volume includes Habermas's essay, the contributions of his interlocutors and Habermas's reply to them. It will be indispensable reading for anyone who wishes to understand one of the most urgent and intractable issues of our time.
Axel Honneth (Key Contemporary Thinkers)
by Christopher ZurnWith his insightful and wide-ranging theory of recognition, Axel Honneth has decisively reshaped the Frankfurt School tradition of critical social theory. Combining insights from philosophy, sociology, psychology, history, political economy, and cultural critique, Honneth’s work proposes nothing less than an account of the moral infrastructure of human sociality and its relation to the perils and promise of contemporary social life. This book provides an accessible overview of Honneth’s main contributions across a variety of fields, assessing the strengths and weaknesses of his thought. Christopher Zurn clearly explains Honneth’s multi-faceted theory of recognition and its relation to diverse topics: individual identity, morality, activist movements, progress, social pathologies, capitalism, justice, freedom, and critique. In so doing, he places Honneth’s theory in a broad intellectual context, encompassing classic social theorists such as Kant, Hegel, Marx, Freud, Dewey, Adorno and Habermas, as well as contemporary trends in social theory and political philosophy. Treating the full range of Honneth’s corpus, including his major new work on social freedom and democratic ethical life, this book is the most up-to-date guide available. Axel Honneth will be invaluable to students and scholars working across the humanities and social sciences, as well as anyone seeking a clear guide to the work of one of the most influential theorists writing today.