Lost in Thought

Lost in Thought PDF Author: Zena Hitz
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691229198
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description
An invitation to readers from every walk of life to rediscover the impractical splendors of a life of learning In an overloaded, superficial, technological world, in which almost everything and everybody is judged by its usefulness, where can we turn for escape, lasting pleasure, contemplation, or connection to others? While many forms of leisure meet these needs, Zena Hitz writes, few experiences are so fulfilling as the inner life, whether that of a bookworm, an amateur astronomer, a birdwatcher, or someone who takes a deep interest in one of countless other subjects. Drawing on inspiring examples, from Socrates and Augustine to Malcolm X and Elena Ferrante, and from films to Hitz's own experiences as someone who walked away from elite university life in search of greater fulfillment, Lost in Thought is a passionate and timely reminder that a rich life is a life rich in thought. Today, when even the humanities are often defended only for their economic or political usefulness, Hitz says our intellectual lives are valuable not despite but because of their practical uselessness. And while anyone can have an intellectual life, she encourages academics in particular to get back in touch with the desire to learn for its own sake, and calls on universities to return to the person-to-person transmission of the habits of mind and heart that bring out the best in us. Reminding us of who we once were and who we might become, Lost in Thought is a moving account of why renewing our inner lives is fundamental to preserving our humanity.

Lost in Thought

Lost in Thought PDF Author: Zena Hitz
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691229198
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 238

Get Book Here

Book Description
An invitation to readers from every walk of life to rediscover the impractical splendors of a life of learning In an overloaded, superficial, technological world, in which almost everything and everybody is judged by its usefulness, where can we turn for escape, lasting pleasure, contemplation, or connection to others? While many forms of leisure meet these needs, Zena Hitz writes, few experiences are so fulfilling as the inner life, whether that of a bookworm, an amateur astronomer, a birdwatcher, or someone who takes a deep interest in one of countless other subjects. Drawing on inspiring examples, from Socrates and Augustine to Malcolm X and Elena Ferrante, and from films to Hitz's own experiences as someone who walked away from elite university life in search of greater fulfillment, Lost in Thought is a passionate and timely reminder that a rich life is a life rich in thought. Today, when even the humanities are often defended only for their economic or political usefulness, Hitz says our intellectual lives are valuable not despite but because of their practical uselessness. And while anyone can have an intellectual life, she encourages academics in particular to get back in touch with the desire to learn for its own sake, and calls on universities to return to the person-to-person transmission of the habits of mind and heart that bring out the best in us. Reminding us of who we once were and who we might become, Lost in Thought is a moving account of why renewing our inner lives is fundamental to preserving our humanity.

The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes

The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes PDF Author: Jonathan Rose
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300148356
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 478

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Book Description
Which books did the British working classes read--and how did they read them? How did they respond to canonical authors, penny dreadfuls, classical music, school stories, Shakespeare, Marx, Hollywood movies, imperialist propaganda, the Bible, the BBC, the Bloomsbury Group? What was the quality of their classroom education? How did they educate themselves? What was their level of cultural literacy: how much did they know about politics, science, history, philosophy, poetry, and sexuality? Who were the proletarian intellectuals, and why did they pursue the life of the mind? These intriguing questions, which until recently historians considered unanswerable, are addressed in this book. Using innovative research techniques and a vast range of unexpected sources, The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes tracks the rise and decline of the British autodidact from the pre-industrial era to the twentieth century. It offers a new method for cultural historians--an "audience history" that recovers the responses of readers, students, theatergoers, filmgoers, and radio listeners. Jonathan Rose provides an intellectual history of people who were not expected to think for themselves, told from their perspective. He draws on workers’ memoirs, oral history, social surveys, opinion polls, school records, library registers, and newspapers. Through its novel and challenging approach to literary history, the book gains access to politics, ideology, popular culture, and social relationships across two centuries of British working-class experience.

The Intellectual Life

The Intellectual Life PDF Author: Philip Gilbert Hamerton
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 502

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Book Description


The Intellectual Life

The Intellectual Life PDF Author: A. G. Sertillanges
Publisher: CUA Press
ISBN: 9780813206462
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
First published in 1920, The Intellectual Life has been repeatedly reprinted and continues to inspire and instruct young scholars.

George Eliot's Intellectual Life

George Eliot's Intellectual Life PDF Author: Avrom Fleishman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139481878
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
It is well known that George Eliot's intelligence and her wide knowledge of literature, history, philosophy and religion shaped her fiction, but until now no study has followed the development of her thinking through her whole career. This intellectual biography traces the course of that development from her initial Christian culture, through her loss of faith and working out of a humanistic and cautiously progressive world view, to the thought-provoking achievements of her novels. It focuses on her responses to her reading in her essays, reviews and letters as well as in the historical pictures of Romola, the political implications of Felix Holt, the comprehensive view of English society in Middlemarch, and the visionary account of personal inspiration in Daniel Deronda. This portrait of a major Victorian intellectual is an important addition to our understanding of Eliot's mind and works, as well as of her place in nineteenth-century British culture.

Intellectual Life in the Ḥijāz before Wahhabism

Intellectual Life in the Ḥijāz before Wahhabism PDF Author: Naser Dumairieh
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004499059
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 371

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Book Description
In Intellectual Life in the Ḥijāz before Wahhabism, Naser Dumairieh argues that the Ḥijāz was a global center of Islamic thought during the seventeenth-century and that Ibn ʿArabī’s ideas were the main theological source for Ibrāhīm al-Kūrānī and his circle.

Misc[ellaneous].

Misc[ellaneous]. PDF Author: United States. Office of Education
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 972

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Book Description


Intellectual Life and the American South, 1810-1860

Intellectual Life and the American South, 1810-1860 PDF Author: Michael O'Brien
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807895644
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 398

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Book Description
Michael O'Brien has masterfully abridged his award-winning two-volume intellectual history of the Old South, Conjectures of Order, depicting a culture that was simultaneously national, postcolonial, and imperial, influenced by European intellectual traditions, yet also deeply implicated in the making of the American mind. Here O'Brien succinctly and fluidly surveys the lives and works of many significant Southern intellectuals, including John C. Calhoun, Louisa McCord, James Henley Thornwell, and George Fitzhugh. Looking over the period, O'Brien identifies a movement from Enlightenment ideas of order to a Romanticism concerned with the ambivalences of personal and social identity, and finally, by the 1850s, to an early realist sensibility. He offers a new understanding of the South by describing a place neither monolithic nor out of touch, but conflicted, mobile, and ambitious to integrate modern intellectual developments into its tense and idiosyncratic social experience.

Victorian Science and Literature, Part I Vol 4

Victorian Science and Literature, Part I Vol 4 PDF Author: Gowan Dawson
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040248993
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 275

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Book Description
This eight-volume, reset edition in two parts collects rare primary sources on Victorian science, literature and culture. The sources cover both scientific writing that has an aesthetic component – what might be called 'the literature of science' – and more overtly literary texts that deal with scientific matters.

Soviet Intellectuals and Political Power

Soviet Intellectuals and Political Power PDF Author: Vladimir Shlapentokh
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400861136
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 349

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Book Description
In this unprecedented work on the status and role of intellectuals in Soviet political life, a former Soviet sociologist maps out the delicate, often paradoxical, ties between the political regime and the creative thinkers who play a major part in the movement toward modernization. Beginning with Stalin, Vladimir Shlapentokh explores the mutual need and antagonism that have existed between political leaders and intellectuals. What emerges is a fascinating portrayal of the Soviet intellectual network since the 1950s, which touches on such topics as the role of literature and film in political opposition, levels of opposition (open, legal, and private), and the spread of paranoia as fueled by the KGB. Throughout he shows how the intellectual communityusually a cohesive, liberal grouphas fared under Khrushchev's cautious tolerance, Brezhnev's repressions, and now Gorbachev's Glasnost. Shlapentokh maintains, however, that under Glasnost freer speech has revealed a more pronounced divergence between liberal and conservative thinkers, and has allowed for open conservative opposition to the reformatory measures of Gorbachev and the liberals. He argues that one of the strongest checks on reform is the growing presence of Russophilism--a movement supporting Russian nationalism and Stalin's concept of socialism--among the political elite and the masses. Although the role of the liberal intellectuals in the late 1980s was less prominent than it was in the 1960s, Shlapentokh asserts that they remain the major agent of modernization in the Soviet Union, as well as in other socialist countries. Originally published in 1990. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.