Recommendations based on "Commentaries on the Holy Books and Other Papers: The Equinox"

When After Virtue first appeared in 1981, it was recognized as a significant and potentially controversial critique of contemporary moral philosophy. Newsweek called it “a stunning new study of ethics by one of the foremost moral philosophers in the English-speaking world.” Since that time, the book has been translated into more than fifteen foreign languages and has sold over one hundred thousand copies. Now, twenty-five years later, the University of Notre Dame Press is pleased to release the third edition of After Virtue, which includes a new prologue “After Virtue after a Quarter of a Century.”In this classic work, Alasdair MacIntyre examines the historical and conceptual roots of the idea of virtue, diagnoses the reasons for its absence in personal and public life, and offers a tentative proposal for its recovery. While the individual chapters are wide-ranging, once pieced together they comprise a penetrating and focused argument about the price of modernity. In the Third Edition prologue, MacIntyre revisits the central theses of the book and concludes that although he has learned a great deal and has supplemented and refined his theses and arguments in other works, he has “as yet found no reason for abandoning the major contentions” of this book. While he recognizes that his conception of human beings as virtuous or vicious needed not only a metaphysical but also a biological grounding, ultimately he remains “committed to the thesis that it is only from the standpoint of a very different tradition, one whose beliefs and presuppositions were articulated in their classical form by Aristotle, that we can understand both the genesis and the predicament of moral modernity.”

An inspired gathering of religious writings that reveals the "divine reality" common to all faiths, collected by Aldous Huxley"The Perennial Philosophy, " Aldous Huxley writes, "may be found among the traditional lore of peoples in every region of the world, and in its fully developed forms it has a place in every one of the higher religions."With great wit and stunning intellect—drawing on a diverse array of faiths, including Zen Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Christian mysticism, and Islam—Huxley examines the spiritual beliefs of various religious traditions and explains how they are united by a common human yearning to experience the divine. The Perennial Philosophy includes selections from Meister Eckhart, Rumi, and Lao Tzu, as well as the Bhagavad Gita, Tibetan Book of the Dead, Diamond Sutra, and Upanishads, among many others.

First published in 1978, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture is a classic work examining the theological doctrines, popular notions, and corresponding symbols and images promoting and sustaining Christian pilgrimage. The book examines two major aspects of pilgrimage practice: the significance of context, or the theological conditions giving rise to pilgrimage and the folk traditions enabling worshippers to absorb the meaning of the event; and the images and symbols embodying the experience of pilgrimage and transmitting its visions in varying ways.Retelling its own tales of "mere mortals" confronted by potent visions, such as the man Juan Diego who found redemption with the Lady of Guadalupe and the poor French shepherdess Bernadette whose encounter with the Lady at Lourdes inspired Christians across the globe, this text treats religious visions as both paradox and empowering phenomena, tying them explicitly to the times in which they occurred. Offering vivid vignettes of social history, it extends their importance beyond the realm of the religious to our own conceptions of reality.Extensively revised throughout, this edition includes a new introduction by the theologian Deborah Ross situating the book within the work of Victor and Edith Turner and among the movements of contemporary culture. She addresses the study's legacy within the discipline, especially its hermeneutical framework, which introduced a novel method of describing and interpreting pilgrimage. She also credits the Turners with cementing the link between mysticism, popular devotion, and Christian culture, as well as their recognition of the relationship between pilgrimage and the deep spiritual needs of human beings. She concludes with various critiques of the Turners' work and suggests future directions for research.

s/t: Individuation & the Religious Function of the PsycheA study of the journey to psychological wholeness--a process that Jung described as a conscious encounter between the ego & the archetypal symbols of the collective unconscious. For contemporary people, Edinger asserts, this encounter is equivalent to the discovery of God--& a critically important experience for everyone. 68 halftones.IllustrationsThe inflated egoThe alientaed egoEncoutner with the selfThe search for meaningChrist as paradigm of the individuating egoBeing an individualThe trinity archetype & the dialectic of developmentMetaphysics & the unconsciousThe blood of ChristThe philosopher's stoneIndex

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."

Vasari's Lives of the Painters, Sculptors, and Architects are and always have been central texts for the study of the Italian Renaissance. They can and should be read in many ways. Since their publication in the mid-sixteenth century, they have been a source of both information and pleasure. Their immediacy after more than four hundred years is a measure of Vasari's success. He wished the artists of his day, himself included, to be famous. He made the association of artistry and genius, of renaissance and the arts so familiar that they now seem inevitable. In this book Patricia Rubin argues that both the inevitability and the immediacy should be questioned. To read Vasari without historical perspective results in a limited and distorted view of The Lives.Rubin shows that Vasari had distinct ideas about the nature of his task as a biographer, about the importance of interpretation, judgment, and example - about the historian's art. Vasari's principles and practices as a writer are examined here, as are their sources in Vasari's experiences as an artist.

A major new work by the philosopher and feminist thinker Adriana Cavarero, this is a fascinating and challenging account of the relationship between the structure of the self and the structure of narrative.

The most comprehensive best-selling anthology of its kind, the second volume in this two-part survey enables readers to choose among the most important canonical and less-familiar texts of the Western literary tradition in Europe and the Americas. It offers complete texts whenever possible, uses the best translations of foreign-language material, and, when appropriate, presents more than one text by each author. Volume Two provides detailed historical and biographical notes and introductions to the later literary periods including Neoclassicism and Romanticism; Realism and Naturalism; and Modern and Contemporary. Individuals interested in a comprehensive look at Western literature through the ages.

Revolutionary and innovative, Lacan's work lies at the epicenter of modern thought about otherness, subjectivity, sexual difference, and enjoyment.This new translation of Jacques Lacan's deliberation on psychoanalysis and contemporary social order offers welcome, readable access to the brilliant author's seminal thinking on Freud, Marx, and Hegel; patterns of social and sexual behavior; and the nature and function of science and knowledge in the contemporary world.

Containing fifty-four chapters written by leading international scholars and covering all aspects of aesthetics, this fully revised second edition includes eight new entries and updated further reading.