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"Agent Relative Ethics asks what the world would look like if we adopted agent relativity wholeheartedly, clinging to no shred of absolute morality. Alastair MacIntyre's haunting image of a post-apocalyptic world, in which our knowledge of ethics has been fragmented, poses a contrast between modern morality and ancient ethics. The two stand divided along the fault line of the nature of the good. Modern ethics has placed its stake in the absolute good, while ancient ethics rests upon the foundation of the relative good. Following the lead of Bernard Williams, Agent Relative Ethics identifies alienation as a disturbing symptom of the present focus upon absolute goods. It then completes the diagnosis of the malady afflicting modern moral theory by clarifying the difference between absolute and relative goods. The remainder of the book explores how agent relativity can overcome the modern fragmentation of our ethical knowledge. Not just any relative goods can rectify the modern disorder. Only shared goods, belonging to a union of individuals, are sufficiently robust to overthrow the contemporary despotism of neutral goods. These shared goods exhibit many parallels with common sense morality, including partiality, impartiality, punishment, and an antagonism toward harmfully using others together with a more lenient attitude toward foreseeing harm. The final chapters probe the conditions, often unpalatable to the modern mind, by which ethics might be restored. Agent Relative Ethics will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in ethics and moral theory, ancient ethics, and the history of philosophy"-- Provided by publisher.

• Cover
• American Gnosis
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Awakening: An Introduction
• 1. What Is Neo-​Gnosticism and What Is Gnosis?
• 2. Neo-​Gnosticism in American Literature
• 3. Neo-​Gnostic Video
• 4. The Neo-​Gnosticism of Miguel Serrano
• 5. The Neo-​Gnosticism of Samael Aun Weor
• 6. The Enigmatic Dr. Musès
• 7. Psychedelic Gnosis
• 8. American Archontic Neo-​Gnosticism
• 9. Understanding American Gnoses
• 10. Political Religion and the End of Modernity
• 11. Future Gnosis
• 12. Conclusion
• Notes
• Index

"This book examines a variety of arguments that might be thought to support skepticism about the existence of morality, and it explains how these arguments can be answered by those who believe in objective moral truths. The focus throughout is on discussing questions that frequently trouble thoughtful and reflective individuals, including questions like the following: Does the prevalence of moral disagreement make it reasonable to conclude that there aren't really any moral facts at all? Is morality simply relative to particular societies and times? What could objective moral facts possibly be like? If there were moral facts, how could we ever come to know anything about them? Shouldn't belief in the theory of evolution undermine our confidence that our moral intuitions reliably reveal moral truths? Would moral facts ever actually explain anything at all? Can morality really have the motivating and rational force we normally take it to have? How can one possibly find a place for objective moral values in a scientific worldview? The book explores plausible answers to questions like these and it thus aims to show why the belief in objective morality remains an intellectually reasonable one"-- Provided by publisher.

• Hypocritical blame
• Complications and defeaters of standing
• What, if anything, makes hypocritical blame morally wrong?
• Other ways of not having standing to blame
• Praising
• Forgiving
• Morality, normativity, and standing.

• The unique physical and cultural geography system of the Dai in Xishuangbanna
• The status of Dai monastic education in Xishuangbanna before the integration of school education
• The present situation of monastic education and school education of the Dai in Xishuangbanna
• An analysis of the causes of the conflicts between monastic education and school education of the Dai people in Xishuangbanna
• Measures dealing with the conflicts between monastic education and school education of the Dai ethnicity in Xishuangbanna.

"How to deal with the relationship between tradition and modernity has become a global concern under the impact of pluralism. This book explores the relationship between traditional Dai culture and modern school education through a field study in the Dai region of Xishuangbanna, Yunnan, China. The study analyses the reasons for conflicts between monastic education and modern school education in the Dai region of Xishuangbanna. It also discusses the logic behind the formation of the Dai people's belief in Southern Theravada Buddhism and its importance in Dai culture. Through the analysis of the changes in monastic education before and after the intervention of the modern school system, the study finds symbiosis in the differences and conflicts between these two forms of education. The author proposes a symbiosis theory of multiple education forms in ethnic areas and offers targeted solutions to specific problems between the Dai monastic education and modern school education in Xishuangbanna. This book will be a great read to students and scholars of Chinese studies, ethnic studies, education, and those who are interested in multi-ethnicity issues in general"-- Provided by publisher.

• 1. The Vow That Starts the Story / Andy Rotman
• 2. Creative Tensions in the Past Lives of the Buddha / Naomi Appleton
• 3. The Final Birth / Reiko Ohnuma
• 4. A Timeless Love Story / Vanessa R. Sasson
• 5. A Great Departure / Kristin Scheible
• 6. Around the Tree of Awakening / Todd Lewis & Jinah Kim
• 7. The Buddha's Teachings and Miracles / David Fiordalis
• 8. Sorrow and its Ending in the Buddha's Last Days / Maria Heim
• 9. The Buddha's Story Continues: Afterlives of the Relics / Stephen C. Berkwitz
• 10. Overstory: First There is a Buddha, Then There is No Buddha, Then There is / John S. Strong
• Bibliography
• Index.

The first three hundred years of the common era witnessed critical developments that would become foundational for Christianity itself, as well as for the societies and later history that emerged thereafter. The concept of 'ancient Christianity,' however, along with the content that the category represents, has raised much debate. This is, in part, because within this category lie multiple forms of devotion to Jesus Christ, multiple phenomena, and multiple permutations in the formative period of Christian history. Within those multiples lie numerous contests, as varieties of Christian identity laid claim to authority and authenticity in different ways. The Cambridge History of Ancient Christianity addresses these contested areas with both nuance and clarity by reviewing, synthesizing, and critically engaging recent scholarly developments. The 27 thematic chapters, specially commissioned for this volume from an international team of scholars, also offer constructive ways forward for future research.

The Cambridge History of Reformation Era Theology explores the key developments in both Protestant and Catholic theology ca. 1475-1650. Exploring the various settings and schools in which theology was formulated and taught, and the social backgrounds of its exponents-including women and non-university-trained men, as well as writers both in and outside Europe-it establishes how the major denominations took their positions and participated in a broader discourse. The volume examines specific theological themes from different denominational perspectives, demonstrating how theology affected the lives of believers via pastoral theology, canon law, and spirituality, and how theological ideas were linked to politics, warfare, science, and the arts. Written by an international team of leading scholars in the field, this History expands the range of theological discourse by introducing new topics and spokespersons, as well as global and ecumenical perspectives. It will remain the definitive place to begin any further study of theology during this period for years to come.

• Aloneness
• Living with...(m)other
• True self
• Becoming a living reality
• False self
• On celebration and ruthlessness
• Transitional objects
• The uses of illusion
• Communicating/not communicating
• Being and potential space
• Object relating
• The use of an object
• The vitality of aggression
• Morals
• Playing and creativity.

"This volume presents new research on the use of experimental methodologies in moral and social philosophy. The contributions reflect the growing plurality of methodologies and strategies for implementing experimental work on morality to new domains, problems, and topics. Philosophers are exploring the ways in which empirical approaches can transform our idea of the good, our understanding of the social nature of norms and morality, as well as our methods of fulfilling ethical goals. The chapters in this volume extend experimental work on morality to previously underexplored areas. The contributions in Part 1 explore the methods and foundations of experimental work in areas such as folk moral judgments, metaethical beliefs, moral explanations, and reflective equilibrium. Part 2 focuses on issues in normative ethics, legal, and political philosophy such as virtue ethics, utilitarianism, theories of justice, and criminal responsibility. Finally, the chapters in Part 3 tackle various applied ethical issues including feminist X-Phi, animal welfare, experimental bioethics, and self-driving cars. Experiments in Moral and Political Philosophy will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in ethics, applied ethics, experimental philosophy, social and political philosophy, and philosophy of law"-- Provided by publisher.

"From the end of the Civil War until the early twentieth century, Anglo, immigrant, and African American settlers were moving north and west faster than ministers within the major denominations could follow them with churches. In 1890, Northern Methodists, the largest Protestant denomination, only claimed 3.5 percent of the American population. Roman Catholics claimed 9.9 percent, and African American Baptists, the largest Black denomination, claimed only 18 percent of the African American population. In total, under 30 percent of Americans went to church on a weekly basis. While African American churches served a relatively larger role within their communities, the major white denominations played a minor role in the lives of the working poor. Clergymen like Dwight Moody reflected, "The gulf between the churches and the mases is growing deeper, wider and darker every hour." Home missionaries like Josiah Strong warned, "Few appreciate how we have become a non-churchgoing-people." Strong was right. In large fractions of the country, especially mining and industrial centers in the West, a simple lack of church edifices and long-term ministers to fundraise for them gave way to a vacuum of Protestant, denominational authority. In part, this disconnect between the number of churches and the size of the population was a result of culturally dislocated migrants. In 1890, more than 9 million Americans were foreign-born, and only a small fraction of those Americans had any familiarity with Anglo-Protestant traditions. They were joined by another 1 million African Americans migrants from the South to northern industrial centers. But this was only one of many reasons the poor did not go to church with the wealthy. While middle-class families paid lip service to the importance of building capacious churches, their own policies and practices reinforced the class system. As one minister reflected in 1887, "The working men are largely estranged from the Protestant religion. Old churches standing in the midst of crowded districts are continually abandoned because they do not reach the workingmen." Meanwhile, he continued, "Go into an ordinary church on Sunday morning and you see lawyers, physicians, merchants and business men with their families [-]you see teachers, salesmen, and clerks, and a certain proportion of educated mechanics, but the workingman and his household are not there." As the working-classes swelled with the expansion of American factories, ordained Protestant ministers served an ever-dwindling proportion of the country"-- Provided by publisher.

• Editors' Introduction to the English Edition of the Seminars of Alain Badiou The Seminars of Alain Badiou (1983-2016): General Preface Introduction to the Seminar Images of Present Time by Kenneth Reinhard About the 2001-2004 Seminar Year
• 1: Contemporary Nihilism
• 1. Session 1
• 2. Session 2
• 3. Session 3
• 4. Session 4
• 5. Session 5
• 6. Session 6
• 7. Session 7 Year
• 2: Logic of Exceptions
• 8. Session 1
• 9. Session 2
• 10. Session 3
• 11. Session 4
• 12. Session 5
• 13. Session 6
• 14. Session 7
• 15. Session 8 Year
• 3: What Does it Mean to Live?
• 16. Session 1
• 17. Session 2
• 18. Session 3
• 19. Session 4
• 20. Session 5 Notes Index.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

Alain Badiou began the twenty-first century by considering the relationship between philosophy and notions of "the present." In this period of his ongoing annual lecture series, the acclaimed philosopher took up the existential problem of how to be contemporary with one's own time-that is, how to not simply inhabit a passing moment but bring a real present into existence. Images of the Present Time presents nearly three years of Badiou's seminars, held from 2001 to 2004, partly against the backdrop of the war in Iraq. Given while Badiou was writing Logics of Worlds, the second of the three volumes of Being and Event, these lectures address some of the same questions of existence in a particular world in a more personal and conversational tone, with reference to literature, philosophy, and contemporary politics and culture. He proposes a new concept of living in a real present as the twisting together of something from the past and something of the future. Featuring some of the philosopher's most inspiring and approachable work, Images of the Present Time is an important book for all readers interested in the practical as well as conceptual possibilities of Badiou's thought.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

"This book explores the imaginative processes at work in the artefacts of Classical Athens, building a diverse picture of culturally mediated thought in this period, prior to the development of explicit theories of the imagination in the centuries after Plato and Aristotle. When ancient Athenians strove to grasp 'justice' or 'war' or 'death', when they had dreams or encountered ghosts, when they deliberated upon problems, how did they do it? Did they think about what they were doing? Did they worry about it? Did they imagine an imagining mind? European notions of the imagination have often begun with philosophical theories, such as those of Aristotle. This volume is premised upon the idea that imaginative activity, especially efforts to articulate it, can take place in the absence of technical terminology or formal theory as developed in later periods. In exploring the imagination and self-reflection mediated by art and literature, the book scopes out the cultural roots of later, more explicit, theoretical enquiry. Taken together, the chapters explore a range of visual and verbal cultural artefacts from the Classical period. Approaching the topic from different angles - philosophical, historical, philological, literary, and art historical - they turn attention upon how these artefacts stimulate affective, sensory, meditative - in short, 'imaginative' - encounters between imagining bodies and their world. The Imagination of the Mind in Classical Athens offers a fascinating reassessment of "imagination" in ancient Greek culture and thought, of interest to students and scholars researching ancient philosophies of mind, as well as those working on ancient philosophy, art, and Greek culture, thought, and literature more broadly"-- Provided by publisher.

• "Hazon Zion" : a Messianic-Zionist movement
• The main ideas of Kol ha-tor
• Does Kol ha-tor express a Messianic-Zionist doctrine held by the Vilna Gaon?
• Why did the disciples of the Gaon of Vilna immigrate to the Land of Israel?
• How did the Rivlinian myth take form?
• Rabbi Menachem Mendel Kasher's The great era
• The academic version of the Rivlinian myth
• Did Shlomo Zalman Rivlin receive the text of Kol ha-tor from Yitzhak Zvi Rivlin?
• Mossad ha-yesod : the Old Yishuv recast as the beginnings of Zionism
• Midrash Shlomo, and The Department for Training Young Orators
• Ha-Maggid doresh Zion : Rabbi Moshe Rivlin as a 'Zionist' leader
• Sefer ha-pizmonim : Yosef Yosha Rivlin as 'Messianic-Zionist visionary'
• Who was the author of Kol ha-tor?
• Shlomo Zalman Rivlin : the man and his literary motives
• The embrace of the Rivlinian myth and Kol ha-tor in religious-Zionist circles.

This book offers new interpretative insight into the Gospel of John, applying a combination of critical discourse analysis, conceptual metaphor theory, and anthropological theories of ritual. Specifically it explores the meaning of the statement Now the ruler of this world will be driven out in John 12:31 and defends a widely overlooked alternative reading. The author proposes a prophecy-fulfilment scheme whereby this predictive utterance by Jesus' is subsequently implied as fulfilled in the departure of the satanically-possessed Judas' from the circle of Jesus' disciples at the Last Supper in John 13:30. Addressing several major strands relating to purity, exorcism, and group identity, the analysis provides an important entry-point for a fresh examination of the Fourth Gospel as a whole. The book represents a significant contribution to Johannine scholarship and to New Testament studies and will be of interest to scholars of religion, theology and biblical studies.

• Introduction: Metaphysics as a science in classical German philosophy / Robb Dunphy, Toby Lovat
• Wolff on ontology as primary philosophy / Dino Jakušić
• Baumgarten on the nature and role of metaphysics / Courtney D. Fugate
• Lambert on the certainty and generality of metaphysics and geometry / Katherine Dunlop
• The methodological role of intellectual intuition in Kant's critique / Toby Lovat
• Kant's promise of a scientific metaphysics / Catherine Wilson
• Can metaphysics become a science for Kant? / Gabriele Gava
• Scientific metaphysics and metaphysical science : the demand for systematicity in Kant's transition project / Michael J. Olson
• Kant, Reinhold, and the problem of philosophical scientificity / Karin de Boer, Gesa Wellmann
• Reinhold on the deduction of the categories / Elise Frketich
• Schulze's scepticism and the rise and rise of German idealism / Robb Dunphy
• The I and I : the pure and the empirical subject in Fichte's science of science / Kienhow Goh
• The science of all science and the unity of the faculties : Schelling on the nature of philosophy / Benjamin Berger
• Two models of critique of metaphysics : Kant and Hegel / Dietmar H. Heidemann
• Quietism, dialetheism, and the three moments of Hegel's Logic / G. Anthony Bruno
• Metaphysics on the model of natural science? : a Kantian critique of abductivism / Nicholas Stang.

"This volume is dedicated to questions about the nature and method of metaphysics in Classical German Philosophy. Its chapters offer original investigations into the metaphysical projects of many of the major figures in German philosophy between Wolff and Hegel. The period of Classical German Philosophy was an extraordinarily rich one in the history of philosophy, especially for metaphysics. It includes some of the highest achievements of early modern rationalism, Kant's critical revolution, and the various significant works of German Idealism that followed in Kant's wake. The contributions to this volume critically examine certain common themes among metaphysical projects across this period, for example, the demand that metaphysics amount to a science, that it be presented in the form of a system, or that it should proceed by means of demonstration from certain key first principles. This volume also includes material on influential criticisms of metaphysical projects of this kind. Metaphysics as a Science in Classical German Philosophy is a useful resource for contemporary metaphysicians and historians of philosophy interested in engaging with the history of the methodology and epistemology of metaphysics"-- Provided by publisher.