Recommendations based on "Great Ideas On the Suffering of the World (Penguin Great Ideas)"

This book focuses on works of art, their creators, and the circumstances affecting their creation. This revision is designed to provide readers with a more streamlined approach to understanding Italian Renaissance art without losing the enthusiasm and appreciation that Hartt demonstrated for this area and which earlier editions of this book conveyed so successfully. Italy and Italian Art; Duecento Art in Tuscany and Rome; Florentine Art of the Early Trecento; Sienese Art of the Early Trecento; Later Gothic Art in Tuscany and Northern Italy; The Beginnings of Renaissance Architecture; Gothic and Renaissance in Tuscan Sculpture; Gothic and Renaissance in Florentine Painting; The Heritage of Masaccio and the Second Renaissance Style; The Second Renaissance Style in Architecture and Sculpture; Absolute and Perfect Painting: The Second Renaissance Style; Crisis and Crosscurrents; Science, Poetry, and Prose; The Renaissance in Central Italy; Gothic and Renaissance in Venice and Northern Italy; The High Renaissance in Florence; The High Renaissance in Rome; High Renaissance and Mannerism; High and Late Renaissance in Venice and on the Mainland; Michelangelo and the Maniera.

Philosophers and theologians have long engaged in intense debate and introspection over the representation of the deity, its possibilities and its proscriptions. The Forbidden Image traces the dual strains of “iconophilia” and iconoclasm, the privileging and prohibition of religious images, over a span of two and a half millennia in the West.Alain Besançon’s work begins with a comprehensive examination of the status of the image in Greek, Judaic, Islamic, and Christian thought. The author then addresses arguments regarding the moral authority of the image in European Christianity from the medieval through the early modern periods. Besançon completes The Forbidden Image with an examination of how iconophilia and iconoclasm have been debated in the modern period.“Even the reader who has heard something of the Byzantine quarrels about images and their theological background will be surprised by a learned and convincing interpretation of the works of Mondrian, Kandinsky, and Malevich in terms of religiously inspired iconoclasm. . . . This is an immensely rich and powerful masterpiece.”—Leszek Kolakowski, Times Literary Supplement

This groundbreaking classic explores the necessity of connections between our life and soul and developing the main lines of the soul-making process.

Universe of the MindA Semiotic Theory of CultureYuri M. LotmanIntroduction by Umberto EcoTranslated by Ann ShukmanA major book by one of the initiators of cultural studies."Universe of the Mind is an ambitious, complex, and wide-ranging book that semioticians, textual critics, and those interested in cultural studies will find stimulating and immensely suggestive." ―Journal of Communication"Soviet semiotics offers a distinctive, richly productive approach to literary and cultural studies and Universe of the Mind represents a summation of the intellectual career of the man who has done most to guarantee this." ―Slavic and East European JournalUniverse of the Mind addresses three main areas: meaning and text, culture, and history. The result is a full-scale attempt to demonstrate the workings of the semiotic space or intellectual world. Part One is concerned with the ways that texts generate meaning. Part Two addresses Lotman's central idea of the semiosphere―the domain in which all semiotic systems can function―presented through an analogy with the global biosphere. Part Three focuses on semiotics from the point of view of history.A seminal text in cultural semiotics, the book's ambitious scope also makes it applicable to disciplines outside semiotics. The book will be of great interest to those concerned with cultural studies, anthropology, Slavic studies, critical theory, philosophy, and historiography.Yuri Mikhailovich Lotman is the founder of the Moscow-Tartu School and the initiator of the discipline of cultural semiotics.

Traces the evolution of the Romantic approach to literary criticism and compares it to the other methods which prevailed in the early nineteenth century.

A portable edition of the famous Red Book text and essay. The Red Book, published to wide acclaim in 2009, contains the nucleus of C. G. Jung’s later works. It was here that he developed his principal theories of the archetypes, the collective unconscious, and the process of individuation that would transform psychotherapy from treatment of the sick into a means for the higher development of the personality. As Sara Corbett wrote in the New York Times, “The creation of one of modern history’s true visionaries, The Red Book is a singular work, outside of categorization. As an inquiry into what it means to be human, it transcends the history of psychoanalysis and underscores Jung’s place among revolutionary thinkers like Marx, Orwell and, of course, Freud.” The Red Book: A Reader’s Edition features Sonu Shamdasani’s introductory essay and the full translation of Jung’s vital work in one volume.

By closely following Goethe's explanations of the color phenomena, the reader may become so divorced from the wavelength theory—Goethe never even mentions it—that he may begin to think about color theory relatively unhampered by prejudice, ancient or modern.By the time Goethe's Theory of Colours appeared in 1810, the wavelength theory of light and color had been firmly established. To Goethe, the theory was the result of mistaking an incidental result for an elemental principle. Far from pretending to a knowledge of physics, he insisted that such knowledge was an actual hindrance to understanding. He based his conclusions exclusively upon exhaustive personal observation of the phenomena of color.Of his own theory, Goethe was supremely confident: “From the philosopher, we believe we merit thanks for having traced the phenomena of colours to their first sources, to the circumstances under which they appear and are, and beyond which no further explanation respecting them is possible.”Goethe's scientific conclusions have, of course, long since been thoroughly demolished, but the intelligent reader of today may enjoy this work on quite different grounds: for the beauty and sweep of his conjectures regarding the connection between color and philosophical ideas; for an insight into early nineteenth-century beliefs and modes of thought; and for the flavor of life in Europe just after the American and French Revolutions.The book does not have to be studied to be appreciated. Goethe's subjective theory of colors permits him to speak most persuasively of color harmony and aesthetics. In some readers these notions will evoke a positive response on their merits. Others may regard them as pure fantasy, but savor the grace and style of their exposition.The work may also be read as an accurate guide to the study of color phenomena. Goethe's conclusions have been repudiated, but no one quarrels with his reporting of the facts to be observed. With simple objects—vessels, prisms, lenses, and the like—the reader will be led through a demonstration course not only in subjectively produced colors, but also in the observable physical phenomena of color. By closely following Goethe's explanations of the color phenomena, the reader may become so divorced from the wavelength theory—Goethe never even mentions it—that he may begin to think about color theory relatively unhampered by prejudice, ancient or modern.

Dr. Carl Gustav Jung, author of some of the most provocative hypotheses in modern psychology, describes what he regards as an authentic religious function in the unconscious mind.  Using a wealth of material from ancient and medieval Gnostic, alchemistic, and occultistic literature, he discusses the religious symbolism of unconscious processes and the possible continuity of religious forms that have appeared and reappeared through the centuries.  “These compact vigorous essays constitute Dr. Jung’s most sustained interpretation of the religious function in individual experience.”—Journal of Social Philosophy

Winner of the International Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction Animal tracks, word magic, the speech of stones, the power of letters, and the taste of the wind all figure prominently in this intellectual tour de force that returns us to our senses and to the sensuous terrain that sustains us. This major work of ecological philosophy startles the senses out of habitual ways of perception. For a thousand generations, human beings viewed themselves as part of the wider community of nature, and they carried on active relationships not only with other people with other animals, plants, and natural objects (including mountains, rivers, winds, and weather patters) that we have only lately come to think of as "inanimate." How, then, did humans come to sever their ancient reciprocity with the natural world? What will it take for us to recover a sustaining relation with the breathing earth?  In The Spell of the Sensuous David Abram draws on sources as diverse as the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty, Balinese shamanism, Apache storytelling, and his own experience as an accomplished sleight-of-hand of magician to reveal the subtle dependence of human cognition on the natural environment. He explores the character of perception and excavates the sensual foundations of language, which--even at its most abstract--echoes the calls and cries of the earth. On every page of this lyrical work, Abram weaves his arguments with a passion, a precision, and an intellectual daring that recall such writers as Loren Eisleley, Annie Dillard, and Barry Lopez.

In this volume, readers are introduced to Vygotsky's argument for a theoretical and methodological approach to differentiate A "higher" mental functions from the more basic brain processes that other theorists believed were at the center of the psychological apparatus. The famed Soviet psychologist's view of developmental issues as an intricately woven tapestry of functions includes analyses of: - the development of speech and written language - the mastering of attention and mnemonic skills - self-control and the higher, more cultivated forms of behavior - the cultural age, personality, and world view of children.