A Matter of Happenstance

A Matter of Happenstance
Author: Catherine Underhill Fitzpatrick
Publisher:
Total Pages: 318
Release: 2010-09
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9781935514626

Catherine Fitzpatrick has used her keen reporter's eyes for detail and fashioned a sweeping saga of the wealthy Reinhardt family, St. Louis merchants who built a local retail empire over the course of a century... The characters vividly jump off the pages and pull you into their lives. Carol S. Cole, Former Features Editor, St. Louis Globe-Democrat An epic ... Writing it meant knowing vast amounts of information ... Many, many passages are strikingly beautiful, some scenes are memorable - so real they're painful to remember. Rose Marie Kinder, Editor Emerita, Pleiades, Winner, 1991 Willa Cather Award Author of An Absolute Gentleman I fell in love with several characters. A.Y. Stratton, Author of Buried Heart With intelligent research and a fine feel for place, this book builds around its characters the kind of historical context that helps to explain how and why people see the world as they do. Eric Sandweiss, Carmony Chair, Department of History, Indiana University, Author of St. Louis: The Evolution of an Urban American Landscape A rare and nearly perfect glimpse into a world long past. It's a well-researched first novel that will entertain, inform, and touch emotions for everyone. Kris Radish, Best Selling Bantam Dell Author, www.krisradish.com

Happenstance

Happenstance
Author: James Lannan
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
Total Pages: 438
Release: 2017-07-14
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1543433901

Of the more than three hundred stories that appear on the pages of this book, the author offers a few excerpts to give the reader a sense of its content: After several nights of vigilance, two of the elves were captured and promptly throttled, and only then did their tribe move on. The people of the hamlet were free at last to take up normal life again. Before dawn one morning, he was found hanging from a rafter in the market with a rope cinched round his neck. Ever righteous anger might have saved Andrz, but never had he near enough. Jesus Christ heard the devil out and cast him back to hell. But Jesus was the Son of God, and Martn a mere upholder of mundane law. He picked up the bills, stuffed them in his pocket, and backed into the alley. A woodcutter and his son discovered the naked poet curled like a foetus on a bed of pine needles, an hour past dawn. The poets body was covered with insect bites, and when roused, he displayed symptoms of a truly nasty head cold. When he was younger, it had always seemed to Joe that who he was at one moment remained consistent with who he was a moment after. But now as he tossed and turned in bed, it occurred to him that his former self might be as indeterminate as the color of flowers on a bush. Before he fell asleep that night, he concluded that the connection between past and present was purely a matter of happenstance.

Happenstance

Happenstance
Author: Robert Root
Publisher: University of Iowa Press
Total Pages: 259
Release: 2013-11
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1609381912

Reflecting on how a student’s parents met because of a fly ball to center field in a summer softball game, author Robert Root wondered how the lives of that student’s parents and of the student himself would have changed had the batter bunted or struck out. Haunted by this pure example of happenstance, he began to ponder his own existence, dependent in part on geology (the Niagara Escarpment) and history (the Erie Canal). He wondered how happenstance had influenced the course of his parents’ lives, in particular their marriages (they married and divorced each other twice), and consequently the shaping of his identity. Happenstance investigates the effects of that phenomenon and choice on one man’s life. Root explores this theme in interwoven strands of narrative, interpretation, and reflection. One strand, “The Hundred Days,” follows his attempt to write one hundred journal entries, each about a different day in his life, to recover memories of specific moments or collections of moments. In the strand headed “Album,” he examines and interprets old family photographs in light of the way he reads them in the present, as someone now privy to a family secret that directed his and his siblings’ lives without their knowledge. Interspersed among these brief interpretations and narratives are reflections on happenstance and choice, a sequence contemplating their effect on his life and perhaps on all our lives. Through juxtaposition and accumulation, the book’s incremental unraveling of meaning imitates the process of unexpected epiphanies and gradual self-discovery in anyone’s life. By revisiting individual days, giving voice to photographs that mutely preserve family moments, and reflecting on the way happenstance and choice determine the directions lives take, Robert Root generates a meditation on identity anchored in an album in words and images of a mid-twentieth-century life.

Explaining Knowledge

Explaining Knowledge
Author: Rodrigo Borges
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 431
Release: 2017-11-24
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0191036838

The Gettier Problem has shaped most of the fundamental debates in epistemology for more than fifty years. Before Edmund Gettier published his famous 1963 paper, it was generally presumed that knowledge was equivalent to true belief supported by adequate evidence. Gettier presented a powerful challenge to that presumption. This led to the development and refinement of many prominent epistemological theories, for example, defeasibility theories, causal theories, conclusive-reasons theories, tracking theories, epistemic virtue theories, and knowledge-first theories. The debate about the appropriate use of intuition to provide evidence in all areas of philosophy began as a debate about the epistemic status of the 'Gettier intuition'. The differing accounts of epistemic luck are all rooted in responses to the Gettier Problem. The discussions about the role of false beliefs in the production of knowledge are directly traceable to Gettier's paper, as are the debates between fallibilists and infallibilists. Indeed, it is fair to say that providing a satisfactory response to the Gettier Problem has become a litmus test of any adequate account of knowledge even those accounts that hold that the Gettier Problem rests on mistakes of various sorts. This volume presents a collection of essays by twenty-six experts, including some of the most influential philosophers of our time, on the various issues that arise from Gettier's challenge to the analysis of knowledge. Explaining Knowledge sets the agenda for future work on the central problem of epistemology.

Cultural Relativism and Philosophy

Cultural Relativism and Philosophy
Author: Dascal
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 329
Release: 2021-11-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004451617

In spite, or perhaps because of, the ongoing cultural, economic, and political uniformization of the world, relativism has risen to the top of the agenda of philosophy and other disciplines. To what extent does cultural diversity affect the activity and the products of philosophizing and of social science? Can there be convergence of worldviews and conceptual frameworks across cultural boundaries? Can there be mutual understanding across them in spite of diversity? These and other questions prompted by the recent upsurge of relativism are tackled in original essays by philosophers and social scientists. The special focus and interest of the book lies in its attempt to confront North and Latin American perspectives on these issues. The four parts of the book (Relativism: transformation or death? A glimpse of variety: Philosophical experiences and worldviews in Latin America; Nature, Culture and Art; and Crossing conceptual frameworks) discuss different, though intertwined, aspects of the challenge of relativism.

Is There a Duty to die?

Is There a Duty to die?
Author: James M. Humber
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 211
Release: 2000-01-03
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 1592590004

The question of whether there might be a duty to die was first raised by Margaret Battin in 1987 in her ground-breaking essay, "Age Distribution and the Just Distribution of Health Care: Is There a Duty to-Die?" In 1997 the issue was reprised when two new articles appeared on the topic written by John Hardwig and the other by former Colorado Governor Richard D. Lamm. Given the renewed interest in the topic, as well as its undeniable importance, Biomedical Ethics Re views sought to initiate an in-depth discussion of the issue by soliciting articles and issuing a general call for papers on the topic "Is There a Duty to Die?" The twelve articles in this volume represent the ultimate fruits of those initiatives. The first seven essays in this text are sympathetic to the claim that there is a duty to die. They argue either: (a) that some form of a duty to die exists, or (b) that arguments that might be offered against the existence of such a duty cannot be sustained. By way of contrast, the last five articles in the text are critical of duty-to-die claims: The authors of the first three of these five articles attempt to cast doubt on the existence of a duty to die, and the writers of the last two essays argue that if such a duty did exist, severe problems would arise when ever we attempted to implement it.

Practical Reason in Historical and Systematic Perspective

Practical Reason in Historical and Systematic Perspective
Author: James Conant
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 360
Release: 2023-11-20
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 3110981335

The idea that there is a distinctively practical use of reason, and correspondingly a distinctively practical form of knowledge, unites many otherwise diverse voices in the history of practical philosophy: from Aristotle to Kant, from Rousseau to Marx, from Hegel to G.E.M. Anscombe, and many others. This volume gathers works by scholars who take inspiration from these and many other historical figures in order to deepen our systematic understanding of questions raised by their work that still are, or ought to be, at the center of contemporary philosophical debate: the form and nature of practical reasoning, agential self-consciousness or practical knowledge, how knowledge of the good relates to our motivational capacity, and the shape of philosophical thinking about sound forms of living together. Accordingly, the volume is divided into three parts: action theory, meta-ethics, and political philosophy. This fusion of perspectives delivers novel possibilities not only for answering the systematic questions outlined above, but also for understanding both what unifies and distinguishes those historical voices that have sought to articulate the concept of practical reason. “This fascinating volume brings out the richness and profundity of an oft-neglected approach to understanding human agency, one that foregrounds action as itself an exercise of reason. Essays on ethics, mind, action, and political philosophy explore the history, substance, and implications of this idea, cutting across while also revealing the unity underlying various parts of philosophy that are typically treated separately.” – Eric Marcus, Auburn University

Cultural Relativism and Philosophy

Cultural Relativism and Philosophy
Author: Marcelo Dascal
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 342
Release: 1991
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9789004094338

To what extent does cultural diversity affect the activity and the products of philosophizing? Can there be convergence of worldviews and conceptual frameworks across cultural boundaries? Can there be mutual understanding across them in spite of diversity? To what extent are the philosophies and worldviews developed in North and Latin America diverse? These and other questions prompted by the recent upsurge of relativism are tackled in original essays by philosophers and social scientists from North and Latin America.

The Formula for Happiness

The Formula for Happiness
Author: Steven N. Czetli
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2011-06-02
Genre: Self-Help
ISBN: 146285916X

The Formula for Happiness is a self-help book which popularizes cutting-edge discoveries made by a board certified clinical psychologist about the nature of happiness and the behaviors and beliefs which enable people to become and remain happy. His groundbreaking way of understanding life and how to live has attracted worldwide attention since it was originally introduced to the scientific community in New Ideas in Psychology: an international journal of innovative theory in psychology in 1996. This is a peer reviewed journal produced by the worlds largest publisher of original scientific work and overseen by an editorial board consisting of faculty from departments of psychology in several of the worlds leading universities. The Formula for Happiness presents this paradigm for the pursuit of happiness in a format which is entertaining and easily understood. It familiarizes readers with what they need to become and remain happy and how to proceed with their personal pursuit of happiness. Readers are provided with an objective means of measuring current levels of happiness as well as methods for increasing happiness and forecasting the effect potential courses of action are likely to have on their happiness at some future point in time. The Formula for Happiness is the product of an innovative approach to the study of happiness which incorporates and surpasses research currently going on in the field of positive psychology in a number of important ways. It is based on generalizations emerging from the review of massive amounts of positive psychology research integrated with insights into the nature of happiness emerging from the fields of clinical and developmental psychology. It provides a comprehensive and coherent set of propositions about the nature of happiness which is different from anything available elsewhere in scientific and self-help literature today. The Formula for Happiness is the first solidly scientifically-based self-help book to assert that happiness is primarily a matter of how people are situated with respect to the circumstances of their lives. Beyond making this assertion, it actually specifies exactly which circumstances make a difference in the of quality of human life. It precisely identifies what we require in order to become and remain happy. The Formula for Happiness is also the first solidly scientifically-based self-help book to assert that happiness is a matter of choice. In addition to advancing this proposition, it provides readers with the only set of scientifically formulated guidelines for making choices which have happiness as their effect. It is the first book to present a set of principles for the pursuit of happiness which, like the principles of nutrition and health, are the product of scientific reasoning and research. In showing readers how happiness is mainly a matter of circumstances and that circumstances are largely a matter of choice, The Formula for Happiness provides a new and much needed counterpoint to most of the thinking within psychology as well as much of what is available on the self-help market today. Instead of promoting the notion that happiness is a matter of what we think, how we perceive, or how we interpret things, The Formula for Happiness shows readers how quality of life is a matter of the way things really are and what we actually do. It is the first self-help book to provide a blueprint for constructing a durable high quality life. In addition to presenting a pioneering paradigm for the pursuit of happiness, The Formula for Happiness contains a set of newly developed psychometric instruments. Readers can use these instruments to measure happiness, to develop goals for personal strategic planning, and to make momentous decisions such as what to major in at college, which career to pursue, whether to take a particular job, whether to remain in a romantic relationship, whether to get married, whether