Everything Happens for a Reason

Everything Happens for a Reason PDF Author: Kate Bowler
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0399592075
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A meditation on sense-making when there’s no sense to be made, on letting go when we can’t hold on, and on being unafraid even when we’re terrified.”—Lucy Kalanithi “Belongs on the shelf alongside other terrific books about this difficult subject, like Paul Kalanithi’s When Breath Becomes Air and Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal.”—Bill Gates NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY REAL SIMPLE Kate Bowler is a professor at Duke Divinity School with a modest Christian upbringing, but she specializes in the study of the prosperity gospel, a creed that sees fortune as a blessing from God and misfortune as a mark of God’s disapproval. At thirty-five, everything in her life seems to point toward “blessing.” She is thriving in her job, married to her high school sweetheart, and loves life with her newborn son. Then she is diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer. The prospect of her own mortality forces Kate to realize that she has been tacitly subscribing to the prosperity gospel, living with the conviction that she can control the shape of her life with “a surge of determination.” Even as this type of Christianity celebrates the American can-do spirit, it implies that if you “can’t do” and succumb to illness or misfortune, you are a failure. Kate is very sick, and no amount of positive thinking will shrink her tumors. What does it mean to die, she wonders, in a society that insists everything happens for a reason? Kate is stripped of this certainty only to discover that without it, life is hard but beautiful in a way it never has been before. Frank and funny, dark and wise, Kate Bowler pulls the reader deeply into her life in an account she populates affectionately with a colorful, often hilarious retinue of friends, mega-church preachers, relatives, and doctors. Everything Happens for a Reason tells her story, offering up her irreverent, hard-won observations on dying and the ways it has taught her to live. Praise for Everything Happens for a Reason “I fell hard and fast for Kate Bowler. Her writing is naked, elegant, and gripping—she’s like a Christian Joan Didion. I left Kate’s story feeling more present, more grateful, and a hell of a lot less alone. And what else is art for?”—Glennon Doyle, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Love Warrior and president of Together Rising

Everything Happens for a Reason

Everything Happens for a Reason PDF Author: Kate Bowler
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0399592075
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 208

Get Book Here

Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A meditation on sense-making when there’s no sense to be made, on letting go when we can’t hold on, and on being unafraid even when we’re terrified.”—Lucy Kalanithi “Belongs on the shelf alongside other terrific books about this difficult subject, like Paul Kalanithi’s When Breath Becomes Air and Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal.”—Bill Gates NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY REAL SIMPLE Kate Bowler is a professor at Duke Divinity School with a modest Christian upbringing, but she specializes in the study of the prosperity gospel, a creed that sees fortune as a blessing from God and misfortune as a mark of God’s disapproval. At thirty-five, everything in her life seems to point toward “blessing.” She is thriving in her job, married to her high school sweetheart, and loves life with her newborn son. Then she is diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer. The prospect of her own mortality forces Kate to realize that she has been tacitly subscribing to the prosperity gospel, living with the conviction that she can control the shape of her life with “a surge of determination.” Even as this type of Christianity celebrates the American can-do spirit, it implies that if you “can’t do” and succumb to illness or misfortune, you are a failure. Kate is very sick, and no amount of positive thinking will shrink her tumors. What does it mean to die, she wonders, in a society that insists everything happens for a reason? Kate is stripped of this certainty only to discover that without it, life is hard but beautiful in a way it never has been before. Frank and funny, dark and wise, Kate Bowler pulls the reader deeply into her life in an account she populates affectionately with a colorful, often hilarious retinue of friends, mega-church preachers, relatives, and doctors. Everything Happens for a Reason tells her story, offering up her irreverent, hard-won observations on dying and the ways it has taught her to live. Praise for Everything Happens for a Reason “I fell hard and fast for Kate Bowler. Her writing is naked, elegant, and gripping—she’s like a Christian Joan Didion. I left Kate’s story feeling more present, more grateful, and a hell of a lot less alone. And what else is art for?”—Glennon Doyle, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Love Warrior and president of Together Rising

Kant: Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason

Kant: Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason PDF Author: Immanuel Kant
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521599641
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason is a key element of the system of philosophy which Kant introduced with his Critique of Pure Reason, and a work of major importance in the history of Western religious thought. It represents a great philosopher's attempt to spell out the form and content of a type of religion that would be grounded in moral reason and would meet the needs of ethical life. It includes sharply critical and boldly constructive discussions on topics not often treated by philosophers, including such traditional theological concepts as original sin and the salvation or 'justification' of a sinner, and the idea of the proper role of a church. This volume presents it and three short essays that illuminate it in new translations by Allen Wood and George di Giovanni, with an introduction by Robert Merrihew Adams that locates it in its historical and philosophical context.

The Enigma of Reason

The Enigma of Reason PDF Author: Hugo Mercier
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674368304
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 405

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Book Description
“Brilliant...Timely and necessary.” —Financial Times “Especially timely as we struggle to make sense of how it is that individuals and communities persist in holding beliefs that have been thoroughly discredited.” —Darren Frey, Science If reason is what makes us human, why do we behave so irrationally? And if it is so useful, why didn’t it evolve in other animals? This groundbreaking account of the evolution of reason by two renowned cognitive scientists seeks to solve this double enigma. Reason, they argue, helps us justify our beliefs, convince others, and evaluate arguments. It makes it easier to cooperate and communicate and to live together in groups. Provocative, entertaining, and undeniably relevant, The Enigma of Reason will make many reasonable people rethink their beliefs. “Reasonable-seeming people are often totally irrational. Rarely has this insight seemed more relevant...Still, an essential puzzle remains: How did we come to be this way?...Cognitive scientists Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber [argue that] reason developed not to enable us to solve abstract, logical problems...[but] to resolve the problems posed by living in collaborative groups.” —Elizabeth Kolbert, New Yorker “Turns reason’s weaknesses into strengths, arguing that its supposed flaws are actually design features that work remarkably well.” —Financial Times “The best thing I have read about human reasoning. It is extremely well written, interesting, and very enjoyable to read.” —Gilbert Harman, Princeton University

Why I Write

Why I Write PDF Author: George Orwell
Publisher: Renard Press Ltd
ISBN: 1913724263
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 15

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Book Description
George Orwell set out ‘to make political writing into an art’, and to a wide extent this aim shaped the future of English literature – his descriptions of authoritarian regimes helped to form a new vocabulary that is fundamental to understanding totalitarianism. While 1984 and Animal Farm are amongst the most popular classic novels in the English language, this new series of Orwell’s essays seeks to bring a wider selection of his writing on politics and literature to a new readership. In Why I Write, the first in the Orwell’s Essays series, Orwell describes his journey to becoming a writer, and his movement from writing poems to short stories to the essays, fiction and non-fiction we remember him for. He also discusses what he sees as the ‘four great motives for writing’ – ‘sheer egoism’, ‘aesthetic enthusiasm’, ‘historical impulse’ and ‘political purpose’ – and considers the importance of keeping these in balance. Why I Write is a unique opportunity to look into Orwell’s mind, and it grants the reader an entirely different vantage point from which to consider the rest of the great writer’s oeuvre. 'A writer who can – and must – be rediscovered with every age.' — Irish Times

Critique of Practical Reason and Other Works on the Theory of Ethics

Critique of Practical Reason and Other Works on the Theory of Ethics PDF Author: Immanuel Kant
Publisher: Barnes & Noble Publishing
ISBN: 9780760760949
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 186

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Book Description


Structural Rationality and Other Essays on Practical Reason

Structural Rationality and Other Essays on Practical Reason PDF Author: Julian Nida-Rümelin
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319955071
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 134

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Book Description
In this book, the author shows that it is necessary to enrich the conceptual frame of the theory of rational choice beyond consequentialism. He argues that consequentialism as a general theory of rational action fails and that this does not force us into the dichotomy teleology vs deontology. The unity of practical reason can be saved without consequentialism. In the process, he presents insightful criticism of standard models of action and rational choice. This will help readers discover a new perspective on the theory of rationality. The approach is radical: It transcends the reductive narrowness of instrumental rationality without denying its practical impact. Actions do exist that are outlined in accordance to utility maximizing or even self-interest maximizing. Yet, not all actions are to be understood in these terms. Actions oriented around social roles, for example, cannot count as irrational only because there is no known underlying maximizing heuristic. The concept of bounded rationality tries to embed instrumental rationality into a form of life to highlight limits of our cognitive capabilities and selective perceptions. However, the agent is still left within the realm of cost-benefit-reasoning. The idea of social preferences or meta-preferences cannot encompass the plurality of human actions. According to the author they ignore the plurality of reasons that drive agency. Hence, they coerce agency in fitting into a theory that undermines humanity. His theory of structural rationality acknowledges lifeworld patterns of interaction and meaning.

Restless Reason and Other Variations on Kantian Themes

Restless Reason and Other Variations on Kantian Themes PDF Author: Amihud Gilead
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030841979
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 150

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Book Description
This book, combining integratively-revised previously-published papers with entirely new chapters, challenges and treats some major problems in Kant’s philosophy not by means of new interpretations but by suggesting some variations on Kantian themes. Such variations are, in fact, reconstructions made according to Kantian ideas and principles and yet cannot be extracted as such directly from his writings. The book also analyses Kant's philosophy from a new metaphysical angle, based on the original metaphysics of the author, called panenmentalism. It reconstructs some missing links in Kant's philosophy, such as the idea of teleological time, which is vital for Kant's moral theory. Although these variations cannot be found literally in Kant’s works, they can be legitimately explicated, developed, and implied from them. Such is the case because these variations are strictly compatible with the details of the texts and the texts as wholes, and because they are systematically integrated. Their coherence supports their validation. The target audiences are graduate and PhD students as well as specialist researchers of Kant's philosophy.

Reason and Faith, and Other Miscellanies of Henry Rogers

Reason and Faith, and Other Miscellanies of Henry Rogers PDF Author: Henry Rogers
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Faith and reason
Languages : en
Pages : 478

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Book Description


A Three Dog Life

A Three Dog Life PDF Author: Abigail Thomas
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0156033232
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 197

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Book Description
Author Abigail Thomas shares the story of how she started a new life after an accident left her husband brain damaged and institutionalized.

Foucault and Derrida

Foucault and Derrida PDF Author: Roy Boyne
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136161023
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
The writings of Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida pose a serious challenge to the old established, but now seriously compromised forms of thought. In this compelling book, Roy Boyne explains the very significant advances for which they have been responsible, their general importance for the human sciences, and the forms of hope that they offer for an age often characterized by scepticism, cynicism and reaction. The focus of the book is the dispute between Foucault and Derrida on the nature of reason, madness and 'otherness'. The range of issues covered includes the birth of the prison, problems of textual interpretation, the nature of the self and contemporary movements such as socialism, feminism and anti-racialism. Roy Boyne argues that whilst the two thinkers chose very different paths, they were in fact rather surprisingly to converge upon the common ground of power and ethics. Despite the evident honesty, importance and adventurousness of the work of Foucault and Derrida, many also find it difficult and opaque. Roy Boyne has performed a major service for students of their writings in this compelling and accessible book.