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Download (.pdf) Intensities: Philosophy, Religion and the Affirmation of Life, edited by Steven Shakespeare and Katharine Sarah Moody (Ashgate, 2012)
The aim of this volume is to break new ground in religious and philosophical thinking on the concept of life. It captures a moment in which such thinking is regaining its force and attraction for scholars – and the relevance of thought to social, cultural, political and religious dilemmas about how and why to live.
The book brings together original contributions by highly distinguished and frequently cited authors in the field of continental philosophy of religion, including John Caputo, Pamela Sue Anderson, Philip Goodchild, Nina Power and Don Cupitt. It has a strong coherence and yet also a distinctiveness based on its refusal to sit easily within either secular philosophical or theological approaches. The concept of life mobilises a thinking that crosses narrow disciplinary boundaries, whilst retaining philosophical rigour.
The book will be of interest to a broad range of scholars working in the humanities, particularly to philosophers, theologians and cultural theorists. Academics and graduate students will be a particular target audience, though undergraduates working on relevant courses and dissertations will find rich material in individual chapters. Given the nature of the topic, the collection could well also attract interest beyond the academy in a non-specialist but literate readership.
‘Is there a renunciation when truth seizes me? Certainly not, since this seizure manifests itself by unequalled... more
‘Is there a renunciation when truth seizes me? Certainly not, since this seizure manifests itself by unequalled intensities of existence. We can name them: in love, there is happiness; in science, there is joy (in Spinoza’s sense: intellectual beatitude); in politics, there is enthusiasm; and in art, there is pleasure.’ Alain Badiou, Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil (London: Verso, 2001), p. 53.
Is the affirmation or intensification of life a value in itself? What role does it play in a philosophy concerned in some sense with rationality, with truth? Can life itself be thought?
Badiou’s acknowledgement of the ‘affects of truth’ signals a complex revival of what might be called the philosophy of life. The reference he makes to Spinoza indicates a philosophical heritage stretching back through Deleuze and Guattari, Foucauldian biopolitics, vitalism, phenomenology, existentialism, Nietszchean affirmation and all the tangled attempts to comprehend life in the concept which go under the name of idealism.
The value of life has become a theme in itself: not the imposition of values upon life’s pliable surface, but life itself as an evaluative upsurge, a multiplication of differences, desires or singular truths. This is not limited to the disciples of Deleuze: the rethinking of agency and selfhood via capability for living in Ricoeur and Nussbaum demonstrates a tenacity of life unconfined by philosophical tribalism.
This collection will examine the roots and relevance of such thinking, the critical contribution which might be made by an affirmation, a politics, even a religion – of life. Life conceived as natality will be brought into conversation with questions of suffering, flesh and the resistance of life to thought. Is life more than survival? Can a thinking of life escape the temptation to domesticate its energies in the service of abstraction? Is materialism the only valid form of a philosophy of life?
Badiou himself does not admit that intensity is the only word. The subject faithful to a truth is riven, their natural state both denied and transformed. This collection will be similarly wary of naïve or one-dimensional thinking of life. The critical question of interpretation, the old question of the ‘meaning’ of life, here takes on a new incisive force. Can philosophy become, perhaps in a new way, a spiritual exercise? Can philosophy ‘live’?
The book is organised in four sections to explore the various dimensions of this question. ‘Life, Death and Natality’ examines the potential of philosophical tropes of birth and dying to impel the thinker into a fruitful engagement with life. ‘Life at the Limits of Thinking’ re-opens the difficult issue of how thought might respect what in life resists conceptualisation and calls for a different response: embodiment, boredom, aesthetics. ‘The Politics of Life’ takes up the way in which the definition and deployment of the category of life plays a key role on questions of political power. The final section, ‘Life and Spirituality,’ attempts to reclaim a philosophical thinking of spirituality, and a spiritualising of philosophy as a style of living, not merely a theoretical exercise.
Absurdities of Atheism
by Daniel Keeran
The author asserts that if there is no God, then fifty-five absurdities follow such as: humans possess no unique... more
The author asserts that if there is no God, then fifty-five absurdities follow such as: humans possess no unique value, there is no objective morality, human life has no meaning or purpose. Without a transcendent standard or source, one's pursuits and values are simply delusions characteristic of the human species.
The information required for the intricate complexity of the universe, from nothing or chaos to life on earth and the structure of the cosmos, has no contributor in the absence of a transcendent intelligence.
In the year of his death in 1955, the revered scientist Albert Einstein clarified his formerly ambiguous views: "My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God" from Calaprice, ed., The Ultimate Quotable Einstein, (Princeton, 2010), p.325.
Philosophy and Happiness
Edited collection, Palgrave Macmillan 2009
Contents and sample chapter available for download!
CONTENTS
Preface – Lisa Bortolotti
CONTENTS
Preface – Lisa Bortolotti
Part one: Happiness and the Meaningful Life
1. Happiness and Meaningfulness: Some Key Differences (T. Metz)
2. Happiness, Temporality, Meaning (J. Cottingham)
3. Tragic Joyfulness (P. Tabensky)
4. Shape and the Meaningfulness of Life (L. James)
5. Immortal Happiness (M. Quigley and J. Harris)
6. “I am well, apart from the fact that I have cancer”: Explaining Well-being within Illness (H. Carel)
7. Suffering in Happy Lives (M.W. Martin)
Part two: Happiness and the Mind.
8. Reflections on Positive Psychology (E. Duncan, I. Grazzani-Gavazzi and U. Kiran Subba)
9. Face Value. Perception and Knowledge of Others’ Happiness (E. Zamuner)
10. The Politics of Happiness: Subjective vs. Economic Measures as Measures of Social Well-being (E. Angner)
11. Happiness and Preference-Satisfaction (I. Law)
12. The Politics of the Self: Stability, Normativity and the Lives we can Live with Living (J. Lenman)
13. Happiness and Life Choices: Sartre on Desire, Deliberation and Action (J. Fernández)
14. The Reflective Life and Happiness (V. Tiberius)
References and Bibliography
Index
For reviews and other information about the book, go to: http://sites.google.com/site/lisabortolottiphilosophy/books/happiness
The Principle of Gift
by Laurie Sones
The Principle of Gift is a an e-book. It can be downloaded FREE by using the link http://tinyurl.com/24egazb
Foreword
In this deliberately short work (a 2/3 hour read) I attempt to show why creativity is the critical... more
Foreword
In this deliberately short work (a 2/3 hour read) I attempt to show why creativity is the critical factor for individuals in their lives, and I introduce and explain a crucial fundamental of the universe attached to the concept. That fundamental I have called The Principle of Gift.
In order to simplify things I will be making some quantum leaps in thinking. Should the reader require a greater step-by-step logic then this can be found in my original more in-depth work, "A Pocketful of Reasoning" (view my "Laurie Sones profile and work" web-page. See "Websites"
or use this link:-
http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/lauriesones ).
Darwin, God, and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Thought You Knew
Stewart-Williams, S., (2010). Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Thought You Knew. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Can someone who accepts that we evolved continue to believe in God? Or does the suffering entailed by natural... more
Can someone who accepts that we evolved continue to believe in God? Or does the suffering entailed by natural selection imply that there could be no God? Are human beings superior to the animals? Or is this just something we like to tell ourselves? Have we overvalued human life and undervalued the lives of (other) animals? What is the purpose of life? Does evolution imply that life has no ultimate purpose? Does evolution tell us what is morally right and wrong? Does evolution imply that, in the end, nothing is right or wrong? In Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life, I address these and other questions raised by Darwin’s theory. I argue that evolution supports a view of a godless universe, devoid of ultimate purpose or moral structure… but that we can live a good life and a happy life even within the confines of such a view.
CONTENTS
Ch 1: Darwin and the Big Questions
Part I: Darwin Gets Religion
Ch 2: Clash of the Titans
Ch 3: Darwin’s God
Ch 4: God as Gap Filler
Ch 5: Darwin and the Problem of Evil
Ch 6: Wrapping up Religion
Part II: Life after Darwin
Ch 7: Human Beings and their Place in Nature
Ch 8: The Status of Human Beings among the Animals
Ch 9: Meaning of Life, R.I.P.?
Part III: Morality Stripped of Superstition
Ch 10: Evolving Good
Ch 11: Remaking Morality
Ch 12: Uprooting the Doctrine of Human Dignity
Ch 13: Evolution and the Death of Right and Wrong
Appendix A: Darwin's Dangerous Idea
Appendix B: Evidence for Evolution
"Darwin, God, and the Meaning of Life" on Amazon.co.uk:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Darwin-God-Meaning-Life-Evolutionary/dp/0521762782/ref=pd_rhf_p_t_2
On Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Darwin-God-Meaning-Life-Evolutionary/dp/0521762782/ref=sr_1_1_title_0_main?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1294243337&sr=1-1