An Intellectual History of Cannibalism PDF Download
Are you looking for read ebook online? Search for your book and save it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Download An Intellectual History of Cannibalism PDF full book. Access full book title An Intellectual History of Cannibalism by Cătălin Avramescu. Download full books in PDF and EPUB format.
Author: Cătălin Avramescu Publisher: Princeton University Press ISBN: 1400833205 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 361
Book Description
The cannibal has played a surprisingly important role in the history of thought--perhaps the ultimate symbol of savagery and degradation-- haunting the Western imagination since before the Age of Discovery, when Europeans first encountered genuine cannibals and related horrible stories of shipwrecked travelers eating each other. An Intellectual History of Cannibalism is the first book to systematically examine the role of the cannibal in the arguments of philosophers, from the classical period to modern disputes about such wide-ranging issues as vegetarianism and the right to private property. Catalin Avramescu shows how the cannibal is, before anything else, a theoretical creature, one whose fate sheds light on the decline of theories of natural law, the emergence of modernity, and contemporary notions about good and evil. This provocative history of ideas traces the cannibal's appearance throughout Western thought, first as a creature springing from the menagerie of natural law, later as a diabolical retort to theological dogmas about the resurrection of the body, and finally to present-day social, ethical, and political debates in which the cannibal is viewed through the lens of anthropology or invoked in the service of moral relativism. Ultimately, An Intellectual History of Cannibalism is the story of the birth of modernity and of the philosophies of culture that arose in the wake of the Enlightenment. It is a book that lays bare the darker fears and impulses that course through the Western intellectual tradition.
Author: Cătălin Avramescu Publisher: Princeton University Press ISBN: 1400833205 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 361
Book Description
The cannibal has played a surprisingly important role in the history of thought--perhaps the ultimate symbol of savagery and degradation-- haunting the Western imagination since before the Age of Discovery, when Europeans first encountered genuine cannibals and related horrible stories of shipwrecked travelers eating each other. An Intellectual History of Cannibalism is the first book to systematically examine the role of the cannibal in the arguments of philosophers, from the classical period to modern disputes about such wide-ranging issues as vegetarianism and the right to private property. Catalin Avramescu shows how the cannibal is, before anything else, a theoretical creature, one whose fate sheds light on the decline of theories of natural law, the emergence of modernity, and contemporary notions about good and evil. This provocative history of ideas traces the cannibal's appearance throughout Western thought, first as a creature springing from the menagerie of natural law, later as a diabolical retort to theological dogmas about the resurrection of the body, and finally to present-day social, ethical, and political debates in which the cannibal is viewed through the lens of anthropology or invoked in the service of moral relativism. Ultimately, An Intellectual History of Cannibalism is the story of the birth of modernity and of the philosophies of culture that arose in the wake of the Enlightenment. It is a book that lays bare the darker fears and impulses that course through the Western intellectual tradition.
Author: Daniel Cottom Publisher: ISBN: Category : History Languages : en Pages : 306
Book Description
Examining paintings, digestion, machines, spa waters, and kissing as cultural forms, and interweaving these examinations with new readings of literary and philosophical texts, Cottom locates a new focus on the inner working of the body, a "visceral turn" in Enlightenment thinking. The most radical image of this visceral turn appeared in the figure of the cannibal - a figure who, in popular imagination, bore a striking resemblance to the image of the philosopher.".
Author: Jack D. Forbes Publisher: Seven Stories Press ISBN: 1583229825 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 259
Book Description
Celebrated American Indian thinker Jack D. Forbes’s Columbus and Other Cannibals was one of the founding texts of the anticivilization movement when it was first published in 1978. His history of terrorism, genocide, and ecocide told from a Native American point of view has inspired America’s most influential activists for decades. Frighteningly, his radical critique of the modern "civilized" lifestyle is more relevant now than ever before. Identifying the Western compulsion to consume the earth as a sickness, Forbes writes: "Brutality knows no boundaries. Greed knows no limits. Perversion knows no borders. . . . These characteristics all push towards an extreme, always moving forward once the initial infection sets in. . . . This is the disease of the consuming of other creatures’ lives and possessions. I call it cannibalism." This updated edition includes a new chapter by the author.
Author: Eduardo Batalha Viveiros de Castro Publisher: Univocal Publishing ISBN: 9781937561215 Category : Philosophical anthropology Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
The iconoclastic Brazilian anthropologist and theoretician Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, well known in his discipline for helping initiate its "ontological turn," offers a vision of anthropology as "the practice of the permanent decolonization of thought." After showing that Amazonian and other Amerindian groups inhabit a radically different conceptual universe than ours--in which nature and culture, human and nonhuman, subject and object are conceived in terms that reverse our own--he presents the case for anthropology as the study of such "other" metaphysical schemes, and as the corresponding critique of the concepts imposed on them by the human sciences. Along the way, he spells out the consequences of this anthropology for thinking in general via a major reassessment of the work of Claude Lévi-Strauss, arguments for the continued relevance of Deleuze and Guattari, dialogues with the work of Philippe Descola, Bruno Latour, and Marilyn Strathern, and inventive treatments of problems of ontology, translation, and transformation. Bold, unexpected, and profound, Cannibal Metaphysics is one of the chief works marking anthropology's current return to the theoretical center stage.
Author: Claude Lévi-Strauss Publisher: Columbia University Press ISBN: 0231541260 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 173
Book Description
On 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.
Author: Frank Lestringant Publisher: Polity ISBN: 9780745616971 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 256
Book Description
Frank Lestringant is one of the foremost authorities on European encounters with the New World. This book is a fascinating account of the existence of New World cannibalism and the images it conjured up for Europeans from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century. Drawing on previously unavailable sources, Lestringant describes how European voyagers, divines and missionaries encountered the cannibalistic cultures and represented them in their journals and writings. Mapping the origins and evolution of the word 'cannibal', Lestringant describes the symbolic uses of cannibalism by authors, political theorists and theologians. In a wide-ranging discussion he surveys the myth and the reality of the cannibal, and explores the deployment of the image in European literature and legend. Lestringant argues that sixteenth-century travellers and writers turned the figure of the man-eating savage of the Americas into a positive figure, a hero who devoured his defeated enemy in accordance with custom and not in order to satisfy some cruel instinct. Two centuries later the philosophers of the Enlightenment used the figure of the cannibal in their fight against the colonialists and Catholics. But the positive image of the cannibal suffered a reversal at the end of the eighteenth century, becoming a hateful figure and arousing the primitivist dreams of Sade and Flaubert. Written in a lively and accessible style, this engaging book will be welcomed by students and researchers in a wide range of discipines - early modern history, European literature, anthropology and religious studies - as well as anyone interested in the history of cannibalism.
Author: Ctlin Avramescu Publisher: Princeton University Press ISBN: 0691152195 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 360
Book Description
Annotation Based on the research he undertook in rare book collections housed in Scotland, the United States, Finland, Iceland, Holland, Germany and Austria, the author presents a systematic history of cannabalism as reflected in the mirror of philosophy.
Author: Joseph Westfall Publisher: Open Court ISBN: 0812699130 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 289
Book Description
Sixteen philosophers come at Hannibal the way he comes at his victims—from unexpected angles and with plenty of surprises thrown in. Hannibal is a revolting monster, and yet a monster with whom we identify because of his intelligence, artistry, and personal magnetism. The chapters in this book pose many questions—and offer intriguing answers—about the enigma of Hannibal Lecter. What does the the relationship between Hannibal and those who know him—particularly FBI investigator Will Graham—tell us about the nature of friendship and Hannibal’s capacity for friendship? Does Hannibal confer benefits on society by eliminating people who don’t live up to his high aesthetic standards? Can upsetting experiences in early childhood turn you into a serial killer? Why are we enthralled by someone who exercises god-like control over situations and people? Does it make any difference morally that a killer eats his victims? Can a murder be a work of art? Several chapters look at the mind of this accomplished killer, psychiatrist, and gourmet cook. Is he a sociopath or a psychopath, or are these the same: Is he lacking in empathy: Apparently not, since he has a quick understanding of what other people think and feel. Maybe what he lacks is a conscience.
Author: Luís Madureira Publisher: University of Virginia Press ISBN: 9780813923765 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 276
Book Description
With inclusion of Brazil in a comparative study of literary texts and their engagement with Western modernity, this study shows how the ""peripheral"" replications of modernity in contemporary Caribbean and Latin American texts differ crucially from their European models, and addresses issues that many post colonial theorists have struggled with.