Empfehlungen basierend auf "Philosophy of the Home: Domestic Space and Happiness"

Desire in Language traces the path of an investigation, extending over a period of ten years, into the semiotics of literature and the arts. But the essays of Julia Kristeva in this volume, though they often deal with literature and art, do not amount to either "literary criticism" or "art criticism." Their concern, writes Kristeva, "remains intratheoretical: they are based on art and literature in order to subvert the very theoretical, philosophical, or semiological apparatus."Probing beyond the discoveries of Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, Roman Jakobson and others, Julia Kristeva proposes and tests theories centered on the nature and development of the novel, and on what she has defined as a signifying practice in poetic language and pictural works. Desire in Language fully shows what Roman Jakobson has called Kristeva's "genuine gift of questioning generally adopted 'axioms,' and her contrary gift of releasing various 'damned questions' from their traditional question marks."

The evil eye—the power to inflict illness, damage to property, or even death simply by gazing at or praising someone—is among the most pervasive and powerful folk beliefs in the Indo-European and Semitic world. It is also one of the oldest, judging from its appearance in the Bible and in Sumerian texts five thousand years old. Remnants of the superstition persist today when we drink toasts, tip waiters, and bless sneezers. To avert the evil eye, Muslim women wear veils, baseball players avoid mentioning a no-hitter in progress, and traditional Jews say their business or health is "not bad" (rather than "good").Though by no means universal, the evil eye continues to be a major factor in the behavior of millions of people living in the Mediterranean and Arab countries, as well as among immigrants to the Americas. This widespread superstition has attracted the attention of many scholars, and the twenty-one essays gathered in this book represent research from diverse perspectives: anthropology, classics, folklore studies, ophthalmology, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, sociology, and religious studies. Some essays are fascinating reports of beliefs about the evil eye, from India and Iran to Scotland and Slovak-American communities; others analyze the origin, function, and cultural significance of this folk belief from ancient times to the present day. Editor Alan Dundes concludes the volume by proffering a comprehensive theoretical explanation of the evil eye.Anyone who has ever knocked on wood to ward off misfortune will enjoy this generous sampling of evil eye scholarship, and may never see the world through the same eyes again.

Learning from Las Vegas created a healthy controversy on its appearance in 1972, calling for architects to be more receptive to the tastes and values of "common" people and less immodest in their erections of "heroic," self-aggrandizing monuments.This revision includes the full texts of Part I of the original, on the Las Vegas strip, and Part II, "Ugly and Ordinary Architecture, or the Decorated Shed," a generalization from the findings of the first part on symbolism in architecture and the iconography of urban sprawl. (The final part of the first edition, on the architectural work of the firm Venturi and Rauch, is not included in the revision.) The new paperback edition has a smaller format, fewer pictures, and a considerably lower price than the original. There are an added preface by Scott Brown and a bibliography of writings by the members of Venturi and Rauch and about the firm's work.

When it first appeared in 1975, After Babel created a sensation, quickly establishing itself as both a controversial and seminal study of literary theory. In the original edition, Steiner provided readers with the first systematic investigation since the eighteenth century of the phenomenology and processes of translation both inside and between languages. Taking issue with the principal emphasis of modern linguistics, he finds the root of the "Babel problem" in our deep instinct for privacy and territory, noting that every people has in its language a unique body of shared secrecy. With this provocative thesis he analyzes every aspect of translation from fundamental conditions of interpretation to the most intricate of linguistic constructions.For the long-awaited second edition, Steiner entirely revised the text, added new and expanded notes, and wrote a new preface setting the work in the present context of hermeneutics, poetics, and translation studies. This new edition brings the bibliography up to the present with substantially updated references, including much Russian and Eastern European material. Like the towering figures of Derrida, Lacan, and Foucault, Steiner's work is central to current literary thought. After Babel, Third Edition is essential reading for anyone hoping to understand the debates raging in the academy today.

In recent years scholars have begun to acknowledge that the occult sciences were not marginal enterprises but an integral part of the worldview of many of our ancestors. Astrology was one of the many intellectual tools--along with what we consider to be the superior tools of social and political analysis--that Renaissance thinkers used to attack practical and intellectual problems. It was a coherent body of practices, strongly supported by social institutions. And alchemy was not viewed primarily as a spiritual pursuit, an idea popularized by nineteenth-century occultists, but as a part of natural philosophy. It was often compared to medicine. Many Renaissance writers suggested links between astrology and alchemy that went beyond the use of astrological charts to determine the best time to attempt alchemical operations. Secrets of Nature shows the many ways in which astrology (a form of divination) and alchemy (an artisanal pursuit concerned with the technologies of minerals and metals) diverge as well as intersect. Overall, it shows how an appreciation of the role of the occult opens up new ways of understanding the past. Topics include the career of Renaissance astrologer Girolamo Cardano and his work on medical astrology, the astrological thinking of Johannes Kepler and Galileo Galilei, the history of the Rosicrucians and the influence of John Dee, the work of medical alchemist Simon Forman, and an extended critique of the existing historiography of alchemy.

The first English-language publication of a classic French book on the relationship between the development of photography and of the medical category of hysteria.In this classic of French cultural studies, Georges Didi-Huberman traces the intimate and reciprocal relationship between the disciplines of psychiatry and photography in the late nineteenth century. Focusing on the immense photographic output of the Salpetriere hospital, the notorious Parisian asylum for insane and incurable women, Didi-Huberman shows the crucial role played by photography in the invention of the category of hysteria. Under the direction of the medical teacher and clinician Jean-Martin Charcot, the inmates of Salpetriere identified as hysterics were methodically photographed, providing skeptical colleagues with visual proof of hysteria's specific form. These images, many of which appear in this book, provided the materials for the multivolume album Iconographie photographique de la Salpetriere.As Didi-Huberman shows, these photographs were far from simply objective documentation. The subjects were required to portray their hysterical "type"—they performed their own hysteria. Bribed by the special status they enjoyed in the purgatory of experimentation and threatened with transfer back to the inferno of the incurables, the women patiently posed for the photographs and submitted to presentations of hysterical attacks before the crowds that gathered for Charcot's "Tuesday Lectures."Charcot did not stop at voyeuristic observation. Through techniques such as hypnosis, electroshock therapy, and genital manipulation, he instigated the hysterical symptoms in his patients, eventually giving rise to hatred and resistance on their part. Didi-Huberman follows this path from complicity to antipathy in one of Charcot's favorite "cases," that of Augustine, whose image crops up again and again in the Iconographie. Augustine's virtuosic performance of hysteria ultimately became one of self-sacrifice, seen in pictures of ecstasy, crucifixion, and silent cries.

'I can understand myself only in the light of inner happenings. It is these that make up the singularity of my life, and with these my autobiography deals' Carl Jung An eye-opening biography of one of the most influential psychiatrists of the modern age, drawing from his lectures, conversations, and own writings. In the spring of 1957, when he was eighty-one years old, Carl Gustav Jung undertook the telling of his life story. Memories, Dreams, Reflections is that book, composed of conversations with his colleague and friend Aniela Jaffé, as well as chapters written in his own hand, and other materials. Jung continued to work on the final stages of the manuscript until shortly before his death on June 6, 1961, making this a uniquely comprehensive reflection on a remarkable life.

'many men compete in digging and kicking but no one at all in the pursuit of human excellence.' Diogenes the Cynic is best remembered today for having lived in a storage-jar, and walking the streets with a lamp in daylight, looking for an honest man. Such stories formed part of a rich tradition of sayings and anecdotes; his biting wit and eccentric behaviour were legendary, and it was by means of these oft-repeated and embellished aphorisms that his moral teachings were transmitted. He scorned the conventions of civilized life, and his ascetic lifestyle and caustic opinions gave expression to the Cynic philosophy that in turn influenced Stoicism. This unique edition also covers Diogenes' immediate successors, such as Crates, his wife Hipparchia, and the witty moral preacher Bion. The contrasting teachings of the Cyrenaic school, founded by Aristippos, a pleasure-loving friend of Socrates, complete the volume, together with a selection of apocryphal letters. An ideal compendium of Socratic moral philosophy, this entertaining volume opens a window on to some surprisingly modern attitudes. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Paul Laffoley, who once worked for Frederick Kiesler and Andy Warhol, emerged in recent years as one of the leading visionary artists of our time. Lavishly illustrated, The Essential Paul Laffoley documents the evolution of his unique intellectual, spiritual, and artistic approaches. Living and working in a tiny space in Boston he called the “Boston Visionary Cell,” Laffoley became best known for his large mandala-like paintings filled with symbols and texts. Their titles range from the paranormal and arcane, such as The Ectoplasmic Man and The Sexuality of Robots, to the organic, as with Das Urpflanze Haus, to the erudite, including De Rerum Natura, a reference to the Roman poet Lucretius. Whether focused on working with plants to create living architecture or centered on the process of alchemy, these detailed, brilliantly colored works reflect Laffoley’s utopian hopes and transdisciplinary interests: throughout, he aimed to unite the boundless freedom of human imagination with the mathematical precision of the physical world. Nearly one hundred of Laffoley’s works are showcased here along with his accompanying “thought-forms,” texts specific to each painting that comment on its particular content. Together with an introduction by editor and gallerist Douglas Walla, a biography by fellow artist Steven Moskowitz, and essays by scholars Linda Dalrymple Henderson and Arielle Saiber, this book is a long-awaited celebration of the theories, writings, and artworks of an extraordinary mind.

Before the Renaissance and Reformation, holy images - the only independent images then in existence - were treated not as "art" but as objects of veneration. The faithful believed that these images, through their likeness to the person represented, became a tangible presence of the Holy and were able to work miracles, deliver oracles, and bring victory on the battlefield. In this magisterial book, one of the world's leading scholars of medieval art traces the long history of the image and its changing role in European culture. Belting's study of the iconic portrait opens in late antiquity, when Christianity reversed its original ban on images, adapted the cult images of the "pagans", and began developing an iconography of its own. The heart of the work focuses on the Middle Ages, both East and West, when images of God and the saints underwent many significant changes either as icons or as statues. The final section of Likeness and Presence surveys the Reformation and Renaissance periods, when new attitudes toward images inaugurated what Belting calls the "era of art" that continues to the present day - an era during which the aesthetic quality has become the dominant aspect of the image. Belting neither "explains" images nor pretends that images explain themselves. Rather, he works from the conviction that images reveal their meaning best by their use. Likeness and Presence deals with the beliefs, superstitions, hopes, and fears that come into play as people handle and respond to sacred images. Recognizing the tensions between image and word inherent in religion, Belting includes in an appendix many important historical documents that relate to the history and use of images. Profuselyillustrated, Likeness and Presence presents a compelling interpretation of the place of the image in Western history.