The Pursuit Of The Ideal

Download or read book The Pursuit of the Ideal written by Steven S. Schwarzschild and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1990-01-01 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Steven Schwarzschild--rabbi, socialist, pacifist, theologian, and philosopher--is both the last of the major medieval Jewish philosophers and the most modern. He is in the tradition of the Jewish thinking that began with Sa'adia Gaon and reached its highest expression in Maimonides. These thinkers believed that Judaism must confront some systematic view of the universe. Sa'adia did this with Kalam, ibn Gabirol with Neo-Platonism, and Maimonides with Aristotelianism. Schwarzschild does it with Neo-Kantianism. From this confrontation, Schwarzschild derives important insights into the nature and structure of contemporary Judaism and Jewish existence in the post-modern world. Menachem Kellner brings together thirteen of Schwarzschild's Jewish (as opposed to straightforwardly philosophical) writings. Included are important discussions of messianism, death of God theology, ethics, aesthetics, and politics. The common concerns underlying these essays are Neo-Kantian idealism and messianism. In an afterword written especially for this book, Schwarzschild shows that these two foci are really one. In an introductory essay, Menachem Kellner explores the philosophic underpinning of Schwarzschild's non-Marxist socialism, pacifism, and messianism; and of his critiques of Christianity, political conservatism, and Zionism.

Download or read book The Pursuit of the Ideal written by Menachem Kellner and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Steven Schwarzschild—rabbi, socialist, pacifist, theologian, and philosopher—is both the last of the major medieval Jewish philosophers and the most modern. He is in the tradition of the Jewish thinking that began with Sa'adia Gaon and reached its highest expression in Maimonides. These thinkers believed that Judaism must confront some systematic view of the universe. Sa'adia did this with Kalam, ibn Gabirol with Neo-Platonism, and Maimonides with Aristotelianism. Schwarzschild does it with Neo-Kantianism. From this confrontation, Schwarzschild derives important insights into the nature and structure of contemporary Judaism and Jewish existence in the post-modern world. Menachem Kellner brings together thirteen of Schwarzschild's Jewish (as opposed to straightforwardly philosophical) writings. Included are important discussions of messianism, death of God theology, ethics, aesthetics, and politics. The common concerns underlying these essays are Neo-Kantian idealism and messianism. In an afterword written especially for this book, Schwarzschild shows that these two foci are really one. In an introductory essay, Menachem Kellner explores the philosophic underpinning of Schwarzschild's non-Marxist socialism, pacifism, and messianism; and of his critiques of Christianity, political conservatism, and Zionism.

Download or read book The Crooked Timber Of Humanity written by Isaiah Berlin and published by Random House. This book was released on 2012-06-30 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Isaiah Berlin is regarded by many as one of the greatest historians of ideas of his time. In The Crooked Timber of Humanity, he argues passionately, eloquently, and subtly, that what he calls 'the Great Goods' of human aspiration - liberty, justice, equality - do not cohere and never can. Pluralism and variety of thought are not avoidable compromises, but the glory of civilisation. In an age of increasing ideological fundamentalism and intolerance we need to listen to Isaiah Berlin more carefully than ever before.

Download or read book Tudoresque written by Andrew Ballantyne and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2012-01-01 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With its distinctive gables and arches, Tudor-style architecture is recognized around the world as a symbol of British culture; it represents the idea of home to British citizens in the United Kingdom and abroad. Some love it, others hate it, but the Tudoresque is still being built—to give a house an old-fashioned air or to create a sense of exotica. Yet few people know anything about how Tudor Revival buildings came to be. To fill this gap is Tudoresque, an insightful book that explores the origin of the style, tracing its roots to the antiquarian enthusiasms of the eighteenth century. It looks at the Tudoresque cottage style, which later influenced 1930s architecture, and the Tudor-style manor house, particularly favored in the nineteenth century. While the style has been discouraged since the 1920s (and is especially reviled by modernists) it continues to be a popular choice—particularly when the architect doesn’t have the upper hand. The authors here show how the style is the mainstream of twentieth-century British architecture and explore how it has travelled abroad. From Tudor Village in Queens to Stan Hywet Hall in Akron to Malaysia, Shanghai, and Singapore, Tudor Revival has found a comfortable home across the globe. These black and white gabled buildings are important not so much because they are great architecture, but because they are everywhere. Illustrated with images from more than 200 years of the Tudor Revival, and including examples from Britain, America, India and East Asia, this knowledgable and entertaining book will be an indispensable guide to the one of the world’s most iconic architectural styles.

Download or read book Perfect Me written by Heather Widdows and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-02-25 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How looking beautiful has become a moral imperative in today's worldThe demand to be beautiful is increasingly important in today's visual and virtual culture. Rightly or wrongly, being perfect has become an ethical ideal to live by, and according to which we judge ourselves good or bad, a success or a failure. Perfect Me explores the changing nature of the beauty ideal, showing how it is more dominant, more demanding, and more global than ever before.Heather Widdows argues that our perception of the self is changing. More and more, we locate the self in the body--not just our actual, flawed bodies but our transforming and imagined ones. As this happens, we further embrace the beauty ideal. Nobody is firm enough, thin enough, smooth enough, or buff enough-not without significant effort and cosmetic intervention. And as more demanding practices become the norm, more will be required of us, and the beauty ideal will be harder and harder to resist.If you have ever felt the urge to "make the best of yourself" or worried that you were "letting yourself go," this book explains why. Perfect Me examines how the beauty ideal has come to define how we see ourselves and others and how we structure our daily practices-and how it enthralls us with promises of the good life that are dubious at best. Perfect Me demonstrates that we must first recognize the ethical nature of the beauty ideal if we are ever to address its harms.

Download or read book The Tyranny of the Ideal written by Gerald Gaus and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-08 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his provocative new book, The Tyranny of the Ideal, Gerald Gaus lays out a vision for how we should theorize about justice in a diverse society. Gaus shows how free and equal people, faced with intractable struggles and irreconcilable conflicts, might share a common moral life shaped by a just framework. He argues that if we are to take diversity seriously and if moral inquiry is sincere about shaping the world, then the pursuit of idealized and perfect theories of justice—essentially, the entire production of theories of justice that has dominated political philosophy for the past forty years—needs to change. Drawing on recent work in social science and philosophy, Gaus points to an important paradox: only those in a heterogeneous society—with its various religious, moral, and political perspectives—have a reasonable hope of understanding what an ideally just society would be like. However, due to its very nature, this world could never be collectively devoted to any single ideal. Gaus defends the moral constitution of this pluralistic, open society, where the very clash and disagreement of ideals spurs all to better understand what their personal ideals of justice happen to be. Presenting an original framework for how we should think about morality, The Tyranny of the Ideal rigorously analyzes a theory of ideal justice more suitable for contemporary times.

Download or read book The Pursuit of a Dream written by Janet Sharp Hermann and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2011-03-10 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This fascinating history set in the Reconstruction South is a testament to African-American resilience, fortitude, and independence. It tells of three attempts to create an ideal community on the river bottom lands at Davis Bend south of Vicksburg. There Joseph Davis's effort to establish a cooperative community among the slaves on his plantation was doomed to fail as long as they remained in bondage. During the Civil War the Yankees tried with limited success to organize the freedmen into a model community without trusting them to manage their own affairs. After the war the intrepid Benjamin Montgomery and his family bought the land from Davis and established a very prosperous colony of their fellow freedmen. Their success at Davis Bend occurred when blacks were accorded the opportunity to pursue the American dream relatively free from the discrimination that prevailed in most of society. It is a story worthy of celebration. Janet Hermann writes here of two men--Joseph Davis, the slaveholder and brother of the president of the Confederacy, and Benjamin Montgomery, an educated freedman. In 1866 Montgomery began the experiment at Davis Bend. The Pursuit of a Dream, published in 1981, received the Robert F. Kennedy Award, the McLemore Prize of the Mississippi Historical Society, and the Silver Medal of the Commonwealth Club of California. Historical writing at its best . . . her research is impressive and is presented in balanced, ironic prose. --David Bradley, New York Times Book Review. A marvelous story for all readers with a taste for the ironies, the ambiguities, and the surprises of history. --C. Vann Woodward. Janet Sharp Hermann, a freelance writer and historian, is the author of Joseph E. Davis: Pioneer Patriarch (University Press of Mississippi).