Author: John Dwyer Publisher: John Donald ISBN: Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 230
Book Description
This study argues that the 18th century, so long regarded as the age of reason, should also be considered the age of passions. Eighteenth-century writers began to explore self-interest, sociability and love, and to manipulate them in ways that would have momentous consequences for the development of Western culture. When carefully cultivated: self-interest led to prudent behaviour and national improvement; sociability contributed to inter-group harmony and national identity; the powerful attraction between the sexes metamorphosed into politics and altruism. Exploring the 18th-century language of the passions in its specifically Scottish context, the author suggests that Scottish writers, such as Allan Ramsay, James Fordyce and James MacPherson were cultural pioneers whose significance goes far beyond the transitory popularity of their literary output. Examiming more lasting thinkers, such as Adam Smith and John Millar, from a radically different perspective, he draws on new connections between the philosophy, social thought, sermons, letters, poetry and epic literature of enlightened Scottish society.John Dwyer is the author of "Virtuous Discourse: Sensibility and Community in Late-Eighteenth-Century Scotland".
Author: Sian Griffiths Publisher: Manchester University Press ISBN: 9781901341065 Category : Cannibalism Languages : en Pages : 228
Book Description
During late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, mythological, historical and contemporary accounts of cannibalism became particularly popular. Consuming Passions synthesizes and analyses those responses to Eucharistic teachings.
Author: Cecelia Tichi Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press ISBN: 0807898694 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 401
Book Description
A gripping and inspiring book, Civic Passions examines innovative leadership in periods of crisis in American history. Starting from the late nineteenth century, when respected voices warned that America was on the brink of collapse, Cecelia Tichi explores the wisdom of practical visionaries who were confronted with a series of social, political, and financial upheavals that, in certain respects, seem eerily similar to modern times. The United States--then, as now--was riddled with political corruption, financial panics, social disruption, labor strife, and bourgeois inertia. Drawing on a wealth of evocative personal accounts, biographies, and archival material, Tichi brings seven iconoclastic--and often overlooked--individuals from the Gilded Age back to life. We meet physician Alice Hamilton, theologian Walter Rauschenbusch, jurist Louis D. Brandeis, consumer advocate Florence Kelley, antilynching activist Ida B. Wells-Barnett, economist John R. Commons, and child-welfare advocate Julia Lathrop. Bucking the status quo of the Gilded Age as well as middle-class complacency, these reformers tirelessly garnered popular support as they championed progressive solutions to seemingly intractable social problems. Civic Passions is a provocative and powerfully written social history, a collection of minibiographies, and a user's manual on how a generation of social reformers can turn peril into progress with fresh, workable ideas. Together, these narratives of advocacy provide a stunning precedent of progressive action and show how citizen-activists can engage the problems of the age in imaginative ways. While offering useful models to encourage the nation in a newly progressive direction, Civic Passions reminds us that one determined individual can make a difference.
Author: Mark Schroeder Publisher: OUP Oxford ISBN: 0191538477 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 240
Book Description
Long claimed to be the dominant conception of practical reason, the Humean theory that reasons for action are instrumental, or explained by desires, is the basis for a range of worries about the objective prescriptivity of morality. As a result, it has come under intense attack in recent decades. A wide variety of arguments have been advanced which purport to show that it is false, or surprisingly, even that it is incoherent. Slaves of the Passions aims to set the record straight, by advancing a version of the Humean theory of reasons which withstands this sophisticated array of objections. Mark Schroeder defends a radical new view which, if correct, means that the commitments of the Humean theory have been widely misunderstood. Along the way, he raises and addresses questions about the fundamental structure of reasons, the nature of normative explanations, the aims of and challenges facing reductive views in metaethics, the weight of reasons, the nature of desire, moral epistemology, and most importantly, the relationship between agent-relational and agent-neutral reasons for action.
Author: Vita Sackville-West Publisher: Vintage ISBN: 0525433988 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 156
Book Description
Irreverently funny and surprisingly moving, All Passion Spent is the story of a woman who discovers who she is just before it is too late. After the death of elder statesman Lord Slane—a former prime minister of Great Britain and viceroy of India—everyone assumes that his eighty-eight-year-old widow will slowly fade away in her grief, remaining as proper, decorative, and dutiful as she has been her entire married life. But the deceptively gentle Lady Slane has other ideas. First she defies the patronizing meddling of her children and escapes to a rented house in Hampstead. There, to her offspring’s utter amazement, she revels in her new freedom, recalls her youthful ambitions, and gathers some very unsuitable companions—who reveal to her just how much she had sacrificed under the pressure of others’ expectations.
Author: Michel Meyer Publisher: Penn State Press ISBN: 0271020318 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 327
Book Description
The subject of the passions has always haunted Western philosophy and, more often than not, aroused harsh judgments. For the passions represent a force of excess and lawlessness in humanity that produces troubling, confusing paradoxes.In this book, noted European philosopher Michel Meyer offers a wide-ranging exegesis, the first of its kind, that systematically retraces the history of philosophic conceptions of the passions in the work of such thinkers as Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Spinoza, Descartes, Hobbes, Rousseau, Kant, and Freud. The great ruptures that led to passion's condemnation as sin, and to its romantic exultation as the truth of existence, are meticulously registered and the logic governing them astutely explicated.Meyer thus provides new insight into an age-old dilemma: Does passion torture people because it blinds them, or, on the contrary, does it permit them to apprehend who and what we really are?
Author: Richard Tarnas Publisher: Ballantine Books ISBN: 0307804526 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 560
Book Description
"[This] magnificent critical survey, with its inherent respect for both the 'Westt's mainstream high culture' and the 'radically changing world' of the 1990s, offers a new breakthrough for lay and scholarly readers alike....Allows readers to grasp the big picture of Western culture for the first time." SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE Here are the great minds of Western civilization and their pivotal ideas, from Plato to Hegel, from Augustine to Nietzsche, from Copernicus to Freud. Richard Tarnas performs the near-miracle of describing profound philosophical concepts simply but without simplifying them. Ten years in the making and already hailed as a classic, THE PASSION OF THE WESERN MIND is truly a complete liberal education in a single volume.
Author: Thomas Dixon Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 113943697X Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 299
Book Description
Today there is a thriving 'emotions industry' to which philosophers, psychologists and neuroscientists are contributing. Yet until two centuries ago 'the emotions' did not exist. In this path-breaking study Thomas Dixon shows how, during the nineteenth century, the emotions came into being as a distinct psychological category, replacing existing categories such as appetites, passions, sentiments and affections. By examining medieval and eighteenth-century theological psychologies and placing Charles Darwin and William James within a broader and more complex nineteenth-century setting, Thomas Dixon argues that this domination by one single descriptive category is not healthy. Overinclusivity of 'the emotions' hampers attempts to argue with any subtlety about the enormous range of mental states and stances of which humans are capable. This book is an important contribution to the debate about emotion and rationality which has preoccupied western thinkers throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and has implications for contemporary debates.
Author: Sharon R. Krause Publisher: Princeton University Press ISBN: 0691162247 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 275
Book Description
In this book Sharon Krause argues that moral and political deliberation must incorporate passions, even as she insists on the value of impartiality. Her work provides a systematic account of how passions can generate an impartial standpoint that yields binding and compelling conclusions in politics.
Author: P. M. S. Hacker Publisher: John Wiley & Sons ISBN: 1118951875 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 483
Book Description
A survey of astonishing breadth and penetration. No cognitive neuroscientist should ever conduct an experiment in the domain of the emotions without reading this book, twice. Parashkev Nachev, Institute of Neurology, UCL There is not a slack moment in the whole of this impressive work. With his remarkable facility for making fine distinctions, and his commitment to lucidity, Peter Hacker has subtly characterized those emotions such as pride, shame, envy, jealousy, love or sympathy which make up our all too human nature. This is an important book for philosophers but since most of its illustrative material comes from an astonishing range of British and European literature, it is required reading also for literary scholars, or indeed for anyone with an interest in understanding who and what we are. David Ellis, University of Kent Human beings are all subject to boundless flights of joy and delight, to flashes of anger and fear, to pangs of sadness and grief. We express our emotions in what we do, how we act, and what we say, and we can share our emotions with others and respond sympathetically to their feelings. Emotions are an intrinsic part of the human condition, and any study of human nature must investigate them. In this third volume of a major study in philosophical anthropology which has spanned nearly a decade, one of the most preeminent living philosophers examines and reflects upon the nature of the emotions, advancing the view that novelists, playwrights, and poets – rather than psychologists and cognitive neuroscientists – elaborate the most refined descriptions of their role in human life. In the book’s early chapters, the author analyses the emotions by situating them in relation to other human passions such as affections, appetites, attitudes, and agitations. While presenting a detailed connective analysis of the emotions, Hacker challenges traditional ideas about them and criticizes misconceptions held by philosophers, psychologists, and cognitive neuroscientists. With the help of abundant examples and illustrative quotations from the Western literary canon, later sections investigate, describe, and disentangle the individual emotions – pride, arrogance, and humility; shame, embarrassment, and guilt; envy and jealousy; and anger. The book concludes with an analysis of love, sympathy, and empathy as sources of absolute value and the roots of morality. A masterful contribution, this study of the passions is essential reading for philosophers of mind, psychologists, cognitive neuroscientists, students of Western literature, and general readers interested in understanding the nature of the emotions and their place in our lives.
Author: John Dwyer
Author: Sian Griffiths
Author: Cecelia Tichi
Author: Mark Schroeder
Author: Vita Sackville-West
Author: Michel Meyer
Author: Richard Tarnas
Author: Thomas Dixon
Author: Sharon R. Krause
Author: P. M. S. Hacker