Global Origins of the Modern Self, from Montaigne to Suzuki PDF Download

Author: Avram Alpert
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438473869
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 454

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Book Description
In Global Origins of the Modern Self, from Montaigne to Suzuki, Avram Alpert contends that scholars have yet to fully grasp the constitutive force of global connections in the making of modern selfhood. Alpert argues that canonical moments of self-making from around the world share a surprising origin in the colonial anthropology of Europeans in the Americas. While most intellectual histories of modernity begin with the Cartesian inward turn, Alpert shows how this turn itself was an evasion of the impact of the colonial encounter. He charts a counter-history of the modern self, tracing lines of influence that stretch from Michel de Montaigne's encounter with the Tupi through the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau into German Idealism, American Transcendentalism, postcolonial critique, and modern Zen. Alpert considers an unusually wide range of thinkers, including Kant, Hegel, Fanon, Emerson, Du Bois, Senghor, and Suzuki. This book not only breaks with disciplinary conventions about period and geography but also argues that these conventions obscure our ability to understand the modern condition.

Author: Avram Alpert
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 1438473850
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 454

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Book Description
Explores how writers across five continents and four centuries have debated ideas about what it means to be an individual, and shows that the modern self is an ongoing project of global history. In Global Origins of the Modern Self, from Montaigne to Suzuki, Avram Alpert contends that scholars have yet to fully grasp the constitutive force of global connections in the making of modern selfhood. Alpert argues that canonical moments of self-making from around the world share a surprising origin in the colonial anthropology of Europeans in the Americas. While most intellectual histories of modernity begin with the Cartesian inward turn, Alpertshows how this turn itself was an evasion of the impact of the colonial encounter. He charts a counter-history of the modern self, tracing lines of influence that stretch from Michel de Montaigne’s encounter with the Tupi through the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau into German Idealism, American Transcendentalism, postcolonial critique, and modern Zen. Alpert considers an unusually wide range of thinkers, including Kant, Hegel, Fanon, Emerson, Du Bois, Senghor, and Suzuki. This book not only breaks with disciplinary conventions about period and geography but also argues that these conventions obscure our ability to understand the modern condition. “Alpert’s scholarship is impressive, offering a focused sweep of intellectual history and incisive readings of many important figures (and the scholarly literature devoted to them). He is a fantastic writer. His prose is direct and evocative, conveying complex ideas in clear and probing terms. This style transforms a long text into a relatively quick and, at times, gripping read.” — Jane Anna Gordon, author of Creolizing Political Theory: Reading Rousseau through Fanon “Through textual and historical analyses and great interpretive abilities, Alpert shows persuasively that Montaigne, Rousseau, Emerson, Suzuki, and others—separately and together—are thinkers not of a Western (monopolizing the sense of modern) tradition, but of global, pluralist thought. His way of reading these thinkers can be a model for others interested in decolonizing and deracializing modern thought while preserving much of the canon with its present membership; with its male, Western-European and Anglo-American membership. But Alpert has done more. Through his arguments he has made room for Du Bois, Fanon, and Suzuki to be included in the canon. This is intellectually progressive and politically significant, and will make a fresh reading experience for many readers.” — Peter K. J. Park, author of Africa, Asia, and the History of Philosophy: Racism in the Formation of the Philosophical Canon, 1780–1830

Author: Ryan Anningson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 100041163X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 243

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Book Description
This book analyzes Buddhist discussions of the Aryan myth and scientific racism and the ways in which this conversation reshaped Buddhism in the United States, and globally. The book traces the development of notions of Aryanism in Buddhism through Buddhist publications from 1899-1957, focusing on this so-called "yellow peril," or historical racist views in the United States of an Asian "other." During this time period in America, the Aryan myth was considered to be scientific fact, and Buddhists were able to capitalize on this idea throughout a global publishing network of books, magazines, and academic work which helped to transform the presentation of Buddhism into the "Aryan religion." Following narratives regarding colonialism and the development of the Aryan myth, Buddhists challenged these dominant tropes: they combined emic discussions about the "Aryan" myth and comparisons of Buddhism and science, in order to disprove colonial tropes of "Western" dominance, and suggest that Buddhism represented a superior tradition in world historical development. The author argues that this presentation of a Buddhist tradition of superiority helped to create space for Buddhism within the American religious landscape. The book will be of interest to academics working on Buddhism, race and religion, and American religious history.

Author: Jyotsna G. Singh
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1119626293
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 531

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Book Description
A COMPANION TO THE GLOBAL RENAISSANCE An innovative collection of original essays providing an expansive picture of globalization across the early modern world, now in its second edition A Companion to the Global Renaissance: Literature and Culture in the Era of Expansion, 1500–1700, Second Edition provides readers with a deeper and more nuanced understanding of both macro and micro perspectives on the commercial and cross-cultural interactions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Covering a uniquely broad range of literary and cultural materials, historical contexts, and geographical regions, the Companion’s varied chapters offer interdisciplinary perspectives on the implications of early modern concepts of commerce, material and artistic culture, sexual and cross-racial encounters, conquest and enslavement, social, artistic, and religious cross-pollinations, geographical “discoveries,” and more. Building upon the success of its predecessor, this second edition of A Companion to the Global Renaissance radically extends its scope by moving beyond England and English culture. Newly-commissioned essays investigate intercultural and intra-cultural exchanges, transactions, and encounters involving England, European powers, Eastern kingdoms, Africa, Islamic empires, and the Americas, within cross-disciplinary frameworks. Offering a complex and multifaceted view of early modern globalization, this new edition: Demonstrates the continuing global “turn” in Early Modern Studies through original essays exploring interconnected exchanges, transactions, and encounters Provides significantly expanded coverage of global interactions involving England, European powers such as Portugal, Spain, and The Netherlands, Eastern empires such as Japan, and the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal empires Includes a Preface and Afterword, as well as a revised and expanded Introduction summarizing the evolving field of Global Early Modern Studies and describing the motifs and methodologies informing the essays within the volume Explores an array of new subjects, including an exceptional woman traveler in Eurasia, the Jesuit presence in Mughal India and sixteenth-century Japan, the influence of Mughal art on an Amsterdam painter-cum-poet, the cultural impact of Eastern trade on plays and entertainments in early modern London, Safavid cultural disseminations, English and Portuguese slaving practices, the global contexts of English pattern poetry, and global lyric transmissions across cultures A wide-ranging account of the global expansions and interactions of the period, A Companion to the Global Renaissance: Literature and Culture in the Era of Expansion, 1500–1700, Second Edition remains essential reading for early modern scholars and students ranging from undergraduate and graduate students to more advanced scholars and specialists in the field.

Author: Masamichi Ueno
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000910814
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
This edited book opens a dialogue on theories and philosophies of education between the East and the West in the era of globalisation. A great deal of research has been devoted to discussion of the ideas of Western theorists such as Plato, Aristotle, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, Fröbel, Herbert, Dewey, Piaget, and so on, and their thoughts have had a tremendous impact on Japanese educational practices. In addition, the 21st-century society has promoted international academic standardisation of knowledge, skills, and competencies for a knowledge-based economy, making great strides in educational development for globalisation. On the other hand, East Asia has retained its own unique insights and perspectives that cannot entirely be understood by Western philosophies of education alone. The contributors to this volume offer the reader insights into how Japanese and East Asian theories and philosophies of education encounter those from the West, by taking up heated and controversial issues such as education of caring, morality, nature, catastrophe, body and cultivation, art, language, politics, democracy, and modernity. The book will appeal to researchers, teachers, students, policymakers, and anyone interested in the theory and philosophy of education in the East, or those who would like to reconsider education in a multicultural society.

Author: Jeanne-Marie Jackson
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691212406
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
An ambitious look at the African novel and its connections to African philosophy in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries The African Novel of Ideas focuses on the role of the philosophical novel and the place of philosophy more broadly in the intellectual life of the African continent, from the early twentieth century to today. Examining works from the Gold Coast, South Africa, Uganda, and Zimbabwe, and tracing how such writers as J. E. Casely Hayford, Imraan Coovadia, Tendai Huchu, Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, and Stanlake Samkange reconcile deep contemplation with their social situations, Jeanne-Marie Jackson offers a new way of reading and understanding African literature. Jackson begins with Fante anticolonial worldliness in prenationalist Ghana, moves through efforts to systematize Shona philosophy in 1970s Zimbabwe, looks at the Ugandan novel Kintu as a treatise on pluralistic rationality, and arrives at the treatment of “philosophical suicide” by current southern African writers. As Jackson charts philosophy's evolution from a dominant to marginal presence in African literary discourse across the past hundred years, she assesses the push and pull of subjective experience and abstract thought. The first major transnational exploration of African literature in conversation with philosophy, The African Novel of Ideas redefines the place of the African experience within literary history.

Author: Avram Alpert
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231553390
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 119

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Book Description
In many ways, Buddhism has become the global religion of the modern world. For its contemporary followers, the ideal of enlightenment promises inner peace and worldly harmony. And whereas other philosophies feel abstract and disembodied, Buddhism offers meditation as a means to realize this ideal. If we could all be as enlightened as Buddhists, some imagine, we could live in a much better world. For some time now, however, this beatific image of Buddhism has been under attack. Scholars and practitioners have criticized it as a Western fantasy that has nothing to do with the actual experiences of Buddhists. Avram Alpert combines personal experience and readings of modern novels to offer another way to understand modern Buddhism. He argues that it represents a rich resource not for attaining perfection but rather for finding meaning and purpose in a chaotic world. Finding unexpected affinities across world literature—Rudyard Kipling in colonial India, Yukio Mishima in postwar Japan, Bessie Head escaping apartheid South Africa—as well as in his own experiences living with Tibetan exiles, Alpert shows how these stories illuminate a world in which suffering is inevitable and total enlightenment is impossible. Yet they also give us access to partial enlightenments: powerful insights that become available when we come to terms with imperfection and stop looking for wholeness. A Partial Enlightenment reveals the moments of personal and social transformation that the inventions of modern Buddhism help make possible.

Author: Chloë Julius
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1526173174
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
Cases of citation presents a history of artists who incorporated literary references into their work from the 1960s onwards. Through a series of object-focused chapters that each take up a singular ‘case of citation’, the collection considers how literary citation emerged as a viable and urgent strategy for artists during this period. It surveys nine artworks by a diverse group of artists – including David Wojnarowicz, Lis Rhodes, Romare Bearden and Silvia Kolbowski – whose citations draw on literary works with authors ranging from Gertrude Stein to Jean Genet. The book also features an interview with pioneering feminist artist Elaine Reichek that discusses her career-long commitment to working with text. Together, the artworks and cited texts are approached from various critical angles, with each author questioning and complicating the ways in which we can ‘read’ textual citations in art.

Author: Kai Horsthemke
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1003855512
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 157

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Book Description
This book tackles questions about the metaphysical and ethical foundations of our concern for our planet, and about educational and pedagogical implications. It pursues answers to urgent questions such as: should educational policy and practice be informed by a concern for nature and the environment for our (human) purposes? Or should we teach and learn for the natural environment in and for itself? Chapters in this volume contribute towards the unmasking and undoing of the various kinds of denialism and pernicious relativism (cultural, moral and epistemological) that have held us in their grip and that continue to thwart attempts to establish a sane and morally sustainable set of relationships between us, human beings, and other animals and the animate and inanimate environment. Education, the Environment and Sustainability provides educators and interested laypersons with tools for critical reflection and interrogation of their own and others’ assumptions, preconceptions, and practices affecting nature and the environment. This volume was originally published as a special issue of Ethics and Education.

Author: Nancy S. Jecker
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190949090
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
We live at a time when the human lifespan has increased like never before. As average lifespans stretch to new lengths, what impact should this have on our values? Should our values change over the course of our ever-increasing lifespans? Nancy S. Jecker coins the term, the life stage relativity of values, to capture the idea that at different stages of our lives, different ethical concerns shift to the foreground. During early life, infants and small children hold dear the value of being cared for and nurtured by someone they trust--and their vulnerability and dependency make these the right values for them. By early adulthood and continuing into midlife, the capacity for greater physical and emotional independence gives people reason to place more emphasis on autonomy and the ability to freely choose and carry out their plan of life. During old age, heightened risk for chronic disease and disability gives us a reason to shift our focus again, emphasizing safeguarding our central capabilities and keeping our dignity and self-respect intact. Despite different values becoming central at different stages of life, we often assume the standpoint of someone in midlife, who is in the midst of planning a future adulthood that stretches out before them. Jecker coins the term, midlife bias, to refer to the privileging of midlife. Midlife bias occurs when we assume that autonomy should be our central aim at all life stages and give it priority in a wide range of ethical decisions. The privileging of midlife raises fundamental problems of fairness. It also suggests the possibility of large gaps in the ethical principles and theories at hand. Ending Midlife Bias: New Values for Old Age addresses these concerns in a step-wise fashion, focusing on later life. Jecker first introduces a philosophical framework that extends moral theorizing to older adults, addressing midlife bias, the life stage relativity of values, human capabilities and dignity, time's passage, the narrative self, and justice between old and young. She then turns to policy and practice and explores ethical issues in bioethics, long term care, personal robotic assistants, care of the dying and newly dead, ageism in medical research, the allocation of healthcare, mandatory retirement, and the future of population aging.