Author: Justin Neuman File Type: pdf Modernist thinkers once presumed a progressive secularity, with the novel replacing religious texts as societys moral epics. Yet religionbeginning with the Iranian revolution of 1979, through the collapse of communism, and culminating in the singular rupture of September 11, 2001has not retreated quietly out of sight. In Fiction Beyond Secularism, Justin Neuman argues that contemporary novelists who are most commonly identified as antireligiousamong them Orhan Pamuk, Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, Margaret Atwood, Nadine Gordimer, Haruki Murakami, and J. M. Coetzeehave defied assumptions and have instead written some of the most trenchant critiques of secular ideologies, as well as the most exciting and rigorous inquiries into the legacies of the religious imagination. As a result, many readers (or nonreaders) on either side of the religious divide neglect the insights of works like The Satanic Verses, Disgrace, and Snow. Fiction Beyond Secularism serves as a timely corrective.

Author: Emily Wilson File Type: pdf Eight years after her revelatory first book, Emily Wilson deepens her focus and extends her vision in new poems of striking intelligence and originality. Venturing into landscapes both interior and exterior, Micrographia explores what Wilson calls the complex rigged wildness of geographical, emotional, and verbal states, a territory located somewhere in thatenjambment withina cave within the brain. Following in the tradition of such poets as Dickinson, Bishop, and Ammons, Wilsons work regards the mind as enmeshed with the natural world, always at the hinge of going over. Her way of speaking is as precisely calibrated and as restless as her way of seeing, and the terrain of Micrographia rises from a rich and unpredictable encounter with poetic language and form. At the same time, the voice of these poems is never less than urgent, coming clear by the fomentmoving through it. Wilsons eye travels the troubled boundaries between visible and invisible worlds, ranging from coastal Nova Scotia to the Andean highlands to Brooklyns industrial Gowanus Canal to the poets own backyard. Steeped in tradition but spoken in tones that are utterly distinctive, these intricate poems enter into the microscopic, micrographic spaces between words and things, between thinking and being.**

Author: Henry D. Thoreau File Type: pdf This is the authoritative edition of an American literaru classicHenry David Thoreaus Walden, an elegantly written record of his experiment in simple living.With this edition, Thoreau scholar Jeffrey S. Cramer has meticulously corrected errors and omissions from previous editions of Walden and here provides illuminating notes on the biographical, historical, and geographical contexts ofthe great nineteenth-century writer and thinkerslife.Cramers newly edited text is based on the original 1854 edition of Walden, with emendations taken from Thoreaus draft manuscripts, his own markings on the page proofs, and notes in his personal copy of the book. In the editors notes to the volume, Cramer quotes from sources Thoreau actually read, showing how he used, interpreted, and altered these sources. Cramer also glosses Walden with references to Thoreaus essays, journals, and correspondence. With the wealth of material in this edition, readers will find an unprecedented opportunity to immerse themselves in the unique and fascinating world of Thoreau.Anyone who has read and loved Walden will want to own and treasure this gift edition. Those wishing to read Walden for the first time will not find a better guide than Jeffrey S. Cramer.**

Author: Anya Daly File Type: pdf This book draws on Merleau-Pontys phenomenology, psychology, neuroscience and Buddhist philosophy to explicate Merleau-Pontys unwritten ethics. Daly contends that though Merleau-Ponty never developed an ethics per se, there is significant textual evidence that clearly indicates he had the intention to do so. This book highlights the explicit references to ethics that he offers and proposes that these, allied to his ontological commitments, provide the basis for the development of an ethics. In this work Daly shows how Merleau-Pontys relational ontology, in which the interdependence of self, other and world is affirmed, offers an entirely new approach to ethics. In contrast to the top-down ethics of norms, obligations and prescriptions, Daly maintains that Merleau-Pontys ethics is a bottom-up ethics which depends on direct insight into our own intersubjective natures, the I within the we and the we within the I insight into the real nature of our relation to others and the particularities of the given situation. Merleau-Ponty and the Ethics of Intersubjectivity is an important contribution to the scholarship on the later Merleau-Ponty which will be of interest to graduate students and scholars. Daly offers informed readings of Merleau-Pontys texts and the overall approach is both scholarly and innovative. **Review In this careful and perceptive work Daly draws out the ethical implications of Merleau-Pontys discussion of the relations between self and other. Clear and engaging, she puts her account in conversation with key aspects of contemporary thought. Highly recommended. (Professor Kathleen Lennon, University of Hull) Daly has written an original, scholarly and provocative book, defending Merleau-Pontys unique emphasis on embodiment, perception and expression, and exploring critically his account of the mutual involvement between self, other and world, founded in empathic fellow-feeling, leading to a comprehensive philosophy of intersubjectivity. Dalys synoptic account is a must read for all interested in Merleau-Pontys philosophy of embodied subjectivity. (Dermot Moran, University College Dublin) Where better to find an embedded, embodied, enactive basis for ethics than in Merleau-Ponty! Not just the embodied mind, but the empathic mind and the embodied person, always in relation to Others and characterized from the beginning by reversibility. In regard to ethics, this is radically different from our standard (often individualistic) Western approaches, and Daly makes this clear through her insightful references to the Buddhist tradition. Her analysis, like Merleau-Pontys own, is enriched by references to psychological and neuroscientific studies, and likewise innovative in her deft ability for constructing an integrated analysis. (Shaun Gallagher, Philosophy, University of Memphis) Anya Daly addresses for the first time a question as central as it is difficult that of the place and significance of ethics in the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty. She approaches this not only from the work of Merleau-Ponty, of which she is perfectly acquainted, but also effectively drawing on major English-speaking philosophers, as well as recent developments in neurobiology. Written in a lively and measured style, this book indisputably sheds new light on Merleau-Ponty and contributes significantly to the question of the foundation of ethics. (Renaud Barbaras, Universite Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne) From the Back Cover This book draws on Merleau-Pontys phenomenology, psychology, neuroscience and Buddhist philosophy to explicate Merleau-Pontys unwritten ethics. Daly contends that though Merleau-Ponty never developed an ethics per se, there is significant textual evidence that clearly indicates he had the intention to do so. This book highlights the explicit references to ethics that he offers and proposes that these, allied to his ontological commitments, provide the basis for the development of an ethics. In this work Daly shows how Merleau-Pontys relational ontology, in which the interdependence of self, other and world is affirmed, offers an entirely new approach to ethics. In contrast to the top-down ethics of norms, obligations and prescriptions, Daly maintains that Merleau-Pontys ethics is a bottom-up ethics which depends on direct insight into our own intersubjective natures, the I within the we and the we within the I insight into the real nature of our relation to others and the particularities of the given situation. Merleau-Ponty and the Ethics of Intersubjectivity is an important contribution to the scholarship on the later Merleau-Ponty which will be of interest to graduate students and scholars. Daly offers informed readings of Merleau-Pontys texts and the overall approach is both scholarly and innovative.