A Short Treatise on the Metaphysics of Tsunamis

A Short Treatise on the Metaphysics of Tsunamis PDF Author: Jean-Pierre Dupuy
Publisher: MSU Press
ISBN: 162895244X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 116

Get Book Here

Book Description
In 1755 the city of Lisbon was destroyed by a terrible earthquake. Almost 250 years later, an earthquake beneath the Indian Ocean unleashed a tsunami whose devastating effects were felt over a vast area. In each case, a natural catastrophe came to be interpreted as a consequence of human evil. Between these two events, two indisputably moral catastrophes occurred: Auschwitz and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And yet the nuclear holocaust survivors likened the horror they had suffered to a natural disaster—a tsunami. Jean-Pierre Dupuy asks whether, from Lisbon to Sumatra, mankind has really learned nothing about evil. When moral crimes are unbearably great, he argues, our ability to judge evil is gravely impaired, and the temptation to regard human atrocity as an attack on the natural order of the world becomes irresistible. This impulse also suggests a kind of metaphysical ruse that makes it possible to convert evil into fate, only a fate that human beings may choose to avoid. Postponing an apocalyptic future will depend on embracing this paradox and regarding the future itself in a radically new way. The American edition of Dupuy’s classic essay, first published in 2005, also includes a postscript on the 2011 nuclear accident that occurred in Japan, again as the result of a tsunami.

A Short Treatise on the Metaphysics of Tsunamis

A Short Treatise on the Metaphysics of Tsunamis PDF Author: Jean-Pierre Dupuy
Publisher: MSU Press
ISBN: 162895244X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 116

Get Book Here

Book Description
In 1755 the city of Lisbon was destroyed by a terrible earthquake. Almost 250 years later, an earthquake beneath the Indian Ocean unleashed a tsunami whose devastating effects were felt over a vast area. In each case, a natural catastrophe came to be interpreted as a consequence of human evil. Between these two events, two indisputably moral catastrophes occurred: Auschwitz and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And yet the nuclear holocaust survivors likened the horror they had suffered to a natural disaster—a tsunami. Jean-Pierre Dupuy asks whether, from Lisbon to Sumatra, mankind has really learned nothing about evil. When moral crimes are unbearably great, he argues, our ability to judge evil is gravely impaired, and the temptation to regard human atrocity as an attack on the natural order of the world becomes irresistible. This impulse also suggests a kind of metaphysical ruse that makes it possible to convert evil into fate, only a fate that human beings may choose to avoid. Postponing an apocalyptic future will depend on embracing this paradox and regarding the future itself in a radically new way. The American edition of Dupuy’s classic essay, first published in 2005, also includes a postscript on the 2011 nuclear accident that occurred in Japan, again as the result of a tsunami.

Theology on a Defiant Earth

Theology on a Defiant Earth PDF Author: Jonathan Cole
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 166690323X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 245

Get Book Here

Book Description
Humanity operates like a force of nature capable of affecting the destiny of the Earth System. This epochal shift profoundly alters the relationship between humankind and the Earth, presenting the conscious, thinking human animal with an unprecedented dilemma: As human power has grown over the Earth, so has the power of nature to extinguish human life. The emergence of the Anthropocene has settled any question of the place of human beings in the world: we stand inescapably at its center. The outstanding question—which forms the impetus and focus for this book—remains: What kind of human being stands at the center of the world? And what is the nature of that world? Unlike the scientific fact of human-centeredness, this is a moral question, a question that brings theology within the scope of reflection on the critical failures of human irresponsibility. Much of Christian theology has so far flunked the test of engaging the reality of the Anthropocene. The authors of these original essays begin with the premise that it is time to push harder at the questions the Anthropocene poses for people of faith.

The Palgrave Handbook of Mimetic Theory and Religion

The Palgrave Handbook of Mimetic Theory and Religion PDF Author: James Alison
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137538252
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 526

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Palgrave Handbook of Mimetic Theory and Religion draws on the expertise of leading scholars and thinkers to explore the violent origins of culture, the meaning of ritual, and the conjunction of theology and anthropology, as well as secularization, science, and terrorism. Authors assess the contributions of René Girard’s mimetic theory to our understanding of sacrifice, ancient tragedy, and post-modernity, and apply its insights to religious cinema and the global economy. This handbook serves as introduction and guide to a theory of religion and human behavior that has established itself as fertile terrain for scholarly research and intellectual reflection.

Laughing on the Brink of Humanity

Laughing on the Brink of Humanity PDF Author: Jan Miernowski
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 413

Get Book Here

Book Description
What does it mean to be human? And, more precisely, what does it mean to be human now, with both humanism and the humanities in crisis? In answer to these questions, Laughing on the Brink of Humanity seeks not some essence of the human but rather an epiphenomenal manifestation—a sign of the human. The book finds such a sign in the joyless, painful, and often deadly laughter that resonates when we cross the barrier between what is human and what is not: animality, machinery, divinity. Jan Miernowski brings together a wide swath of discourses and figures, from Plato and the Bible through early modern humanism, to Friedrich Nietzsche, Georges Bataille, Hannah Arendt, Claude Lanzmann, Spike Jonze, Tom Stoppard, and Michel Houellebecq. Looking for laughter on the brink of humanity—in literature and philosophy, natural science and film, theology and computer science—the book offers an exercise in epihumanism appropriate to our posthuman age.

Diseases of the Head

Diseases of the Head PDF Author: Matt Rosen
Publisher: punctum books
ISBN: 1953035116
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 523

Get Book Here

Book Description
Diseases of the Head is an anthology of essays from contemporary philosophers, artists, and writers working at the crossroads of speculative philosophy and speculative horror. At once a compendium of multivocal endeavors, a breviary of supposedly illicit ponderings, and a travelogue of philosophical exploration, this collection centers itself on the place at which philosophy and horror meet. Employing rigorous analysis, incisive experimentation, and novel invention, this anthology asks about the use that speculation can make of horror and horror of speculation, about whether philosophy is fictional or fiction philosophical, and about the relationship between horror, the exigencies of our world and time, and the future developments that may await us in philosophy itself. From philosophers working on horrific themes, to horror writers influenced by heresies in the wake of post-Kantianism, to artists engaged in projects that address monstrosity and alienation, Diseases of the Head aims at nothing less than a speculative coup d'état. Refusing both total negation and absolute affirmation, refusing to deny everything or account for everything, refusing the posture of critique and the posture of all-encompassing unification, this collection of essays aims at exposition and construction, analysis and creation - it desires to fight for some thing, but not everything, and not nothing. And it desires, most of all, to speak from the position of its own insufficiency, its own partiality, its own under-determinacy, which is always indicative of the practice of thinking, of speculation. Considering themes of anonymity, otherness and alterity, the gothic, extinction and the world without us, the end times, the apocalypse, the ancient and the world before us, and the uncanny or unheimlich, among other motifs, this anthology seeks to articulate the cutting edge which can be found at the intersection of speculative philosophy and speculative horror.

Vengeance in Reverse

Vengeance in Reverse PDF Author: Mark R. Anspach
Publisher: MSU Press
ISBN: 1628952903
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 175

Get Book Here

Book Description
How do humans stop fighting? Where do the gods of myth come from? What does it mean to go mad? Mark R. Anspach tackles these and other conundrums as he draws on ethnography, literature, psychotherapy, and the theory of René Girard to explore some of the fundamental mechanisms of human interaction. Likening gift exchange to vengeance in reverse, the first part of the book outlines a fresh approach to reciprocity, while the second part traces the emergence of transcendence in collective myths and individual delusions. From the peacemaking rituals of prestate societies to the paradoxical structure of consciousness, Anspach takes the reader on an intellectual journey that begins with the problem of how to deceive violence and ends with the riddle of how one can deceive oneself.

State of Fear in a Liquid World

State of Fear in a Liquid World PDF Author: Carlo Bordoni
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1351981137
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 134

Get Book Here

Book Description
Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Preface: A silent companion in a liquid world -- 1 Phobos, a god repressed -- 2 Fear of the machine -- 3 Human adaption to the machine -- 4 Natural and moral disasters -- 5 Danger as an everyday experience -- 6 Social security and individual insecurity -- 7 Fear of invasion -- 8 Fear of exclusion -- 9 Waste in our future -- 10 The frailty of personal relationships -- 11 Forms of reassurance -- 12 Globalisation and "overclass"--13 The Panopticon inside the net -- 14 The anxiety-inducing state and the management of insecurity

Biopolitical Disaster

Biopolitical Disaster PDF Author: Jennifer L. Lawrence
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 131721630X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 295

Get Book Here

Book Description
Biopolitical Disaster employs a grounded analysis of the production and lived-experience of biopolitical life in order to illustrate how disaster production and response are intimately interconnected. The book is organized into four parts, each revealing how socio-environmental consequences of instrumentalist environmentalities produce disastrous settings and political experiences that are evident in our contemporary world. Beginning with "Commodifying crisis," the volume focuses on the inherent production of disaster that is bound to the crisis tendency of capitalism. The second part, "Governmentalities of disaster," addresses material and discursive questions of governance, the role of the state, as well as questions of democracy. This part explores the linkage between problematic environmental rationalities and policies. Third, the volume considers how and where the (de)valuation of life itself takes shape within the theme of "Affected bodies," and investigates the corporeal impacts of disastrous biopolitics. The final part, "Environmental aesthetics and resistance," fuses concepts from affect theory, feminist studies, post-positivism, and contemporary political theory to identify sites and practices of political resistance to biopower. Biopolitical Disaster will be of great interest to postgraduates, researchers, and academic scholars working in Political ecology; Geopolitics; Feminist critique; Intersectionality; Environmental politics; Science and technology studies; Disaster studies; Political theory; Indigenous studies; Aesthetics; and Resistance.

Wanting

Wanting PDF Author: Luke Burgis
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1250262496
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 222

Get Book Here

Book Description
* Financial Times Business Book of the Month * Next Big Idea Club Nominee * One of Bloomberg's "52 New Books That Top Business Leaders Are Recommending" * Aleo Review of Books 2022 Book of the Year * A groundbreaking exploration of why we want what we want, and a toolkit for freeing ourselves from chasing unfulfilling desires. Gravity affects every aspect of our physical being, but there’s a psychological force just as powerful—yet almost nobody has heard of it. It’s responsible for bringing groups of people together and pulling them apart, making certain goals attractive to some and not to others, and fueling cycles of anxiety and conflict. In Wanting, Luke Burgis draws on the work of French polymath René Girard to bring this hidden force to light and reveals how it shapes our lives and societies. According to Girard, humans don’t desire anything independently. Human desire is mimetic—we imitate what other people want. This affects the way we choose partners, friends, careers, clothes, and vacation destinations. Mimetic desire is responsible for the formation of our very identities. It explains the enduring relevancy of Shakespeare’s plays, why Peter Thiel decided to be the first investor in Facebook, and why our world is growing more divided as it becomes more connected. Wanting also shows that conflict does not arise because of our differences—it comes from our sameness. Because we learn to want what other people want, we often end up competing for the same things. Ignoring our large similarities, we cling to our perceived differences. Drawing on his experience as an entrepreneur, teacher, and student of classical philosophy and theology, Burgis shares tactics that help turn blind wanting into intentional wanting--not by trying to rid ourselves of desire, but by desiring differently. It’s possible to be more in control of the things we want, to achieve more independence from trends and bubbles, and to find more meaning in our work and lives. The future will be shaped by our desires. Wanting shows us how to desire a better one.

Novel-Poetry

Novel-Poetry PDF Author: Emily Allen
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198929226
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 225

Get Book Here

Book Description
Novel-Poetry examines the verse-novel--a hybrid genre that emerged in the middle decades of Britain's nineteenth century--to make a larger claim about the nature of genre and formal structures for time, action, and identity that cross genres. The volume uncovers trajectories of literary influence that structure our approach to literature and affect how we shape our lives, lives which are often constrained by cause-and-effect and narrative-driven ways of approaching time and possibility. Novel-Poetry tracks an alternative way of thinking about time and event that was inspired by the French Revolution, popularized by Lord Byron, and explored by experimental Victorian poets such as Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, Arthur Hugh Clough, and George Meredith. The volume turns to the work of philosophers Alain Badiou, Jean-Pierre Dupuy, and Slavoj %Zi%zek to theorize this alternative mode, which it aligns with the "futur antérieur." The temporality of the future anterior disrupts both the novel's realist chronologies and the expressivist lyric's cult of "the moment," thus liberating possibilities for collective action. Ranging widely across romantic lyric poetry, Victorian novels, and nineteenth-century and contemporary literary theory, Novel-Poetry asks, what alternative structures and temporalities does a focus on either realistic narrative or the lyric moment occlude? Are there ways of thinking about lived experience and personal or collective agency that do not conform to traditional models, ways that the verse-novel might help us to explore? What might be gained today from trying to think about ourselves and our world outside of established frameworks that are now so naturalized as to feel almost inescapable? This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence.