Flight of the Gods

Flight of the Gods
Author: Ilse Nina Bulhof
Publisher:
Total Pages: 444
Release: 2000
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780823220342

Contemporary continental philosophy approaches metaphysics with great reservation. A point of criticism concerns traditional philosophical speaking about God. Whereas Nietzsche, with his question "God is dead; who killed Him?" was, in his time, highly 'unzeitgemäß' and shocking, the twentieth century by contrast, saw Heidegger's concept of 'onto-theology' and its implied problematization of the God of the metaphysicians quickly become a famous term. In Heidegger's words, to a philosophical concept or 'being' we can neither pray, nor kneel. Heidegger did not, however, return to the God of Christian faith. He tried to initiate a new way of speaking about God--a way that reveals the limits of philosophical discourse. Derrida, Marion, Bataille, Adorno, Taubes and Bakhtin, each in their own way, continue this exploration begun by Nietzsche and Heidegger. This book takes a fresh look at these developments. The 'death of God' as the editors say in an introductory study, announces not so much the death of the 'old God'--the God of philosophers, theologians and believers--but rather the death of the god who put himself on His throne: autonomous human reason. In listening to the reactions to this dethronement of autonomous reason, the editors believe they hear the echoes of an experience of an embarrassment rooted partly in an old medieval tradition: negative theology. With the death of this 'new god', might a sensitivity reappear for transcendence? Here the editors want to offer a platform where contemporary philosophers of culture can again pose the question of speaking about God.

Like Sex with Gods

Like Sex with Gods
Author: Bayla Singer
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2003
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 1603447164

"Human flight is not a simple matter of science and technology. It is a continuing epic of dreams and obsession, of yearning and striving to harness the intellect in the service of the emotions." In Like Sex with Gods: An Unorthodox History of Flight, Bayla Singer offers a unique approach to humanity's fascination with flying. Rather than merely tracing the factual prehistory of flight up to the success of the Wright Brothers, Bayla Singer considers the interaction and influence of our dreams, fantasies, culture, and technology on the age-old quest to fly. This enlightening study begins with the deities and other denizens of the heavens that humanity has created in its religion, literature, and art. At first a monopoly of the gods, flight came to interest humanity as a way to free itself from the physical and intellectual bonds of the earth. The myth of flight eventually gives way to the pursuit of actual flight. Singer shows in compelling detail the many flying machines that have been created, including balloons, gliders, and kites. The accomplishment of the Wright Brothers and our successful trips into space are merely stops on a continuing journey, as our ancient dream of flight continues to push us to new and loftier places. Filled with compelling stories and detailed illustrations, this book provides absorbing reading for aviation experts, those fascinated with the intimate relationship between technology and culture, and all of us who have even a passing interest in flying.

Transfinite Life

Transfinite Life
Author: Bruce Rosenstock
Publisher:
Total Pages: 270
Release: 2017
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780253029706

Oskar Goldberg was an important and controversial figure in Weimar Germany. He challenged the rising racial conception of the state and claimed that the Jewish people were on a metaphysical mission to defeat race-based statism. He attracted the attention of his contemporaries--Walter Benjamin, Gershom Scholem, Thomas Mann, and Carl Schmitt, among others--with the argument that ancient Israel's sacrificial rituals held the key to overcoming the tyranny of technology in the modern world. Bruce Rosenstock offers a sympathetic but critical philosophical portrait of Goldberg and puts him into conversation with Jewish and political figures that circulated in his cultural environment. Rosenstock reveals Goldberg as a deeply imaginative and broad-minded thinker who drew on biology, mathematics, Kabbalah, and his interests in ghost photography to account for the origin of the earth. Caricatured as a Jewish proto-fascist in his day, Goldberg's views of the tyranny of technology, biopolitics, and the "new vitalism" remain relevant to this day.

Gods of Fire and Thunder

Gods of Fire and Thunder
Author: Fred Saberhagen
Publisher: JSS Literary Productions, LLC
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2020-09-09
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1937422216

Haraldur the northman once joined Jason on his fabled quest for the Golden Fleece, but now he wants nothing more to do with gods and adventure. Returning to his homeland for the first time in many years, he hopes only to settle down on a farm of his own—until he comes across an impenetrable wall of eldritch fire and a lovesick youth determined to breach the wall at any cost. Behind the towering flames, he is told, lies a beautiful Valkyrie trapped in an enchanted sleep, as well as, perhaps, a golden treasure beyond mortal reckoning. It is the gold that tempts Hal to agree, against his better judgment, to assist the youth in his quest. But to find a way past the fiery wall, they must first brave gnomes, ghosts, and the wrath of the gods themselves. For a mighty battle is brewing, and Hal soon finds himself caught up in a celestial conflict between Thor the Thunderer, Loki the Trickster, and most powerful of all, Wodan, the merciless Lord of Battles!

A Flight in the Heavens

A Flight in the Heavens
Author: Gabrielle Gagne-Cyr
Publisher:
Total Pages: 510
Release: 2021-06-21
Genre:
ISBN: 9781777652005

A Flight in the Heavens is the first novel in an epic two tomes fantasy series from author, Gabrielle Gagne-Cyr. "I see you my little moppets." The king is dead, long live his murderer. After fifteen years of passive torment, Farrah and her implacable group of renegades endeavour to alter their fates by attempting to assassinate the man who stole everything from them, Daemon Daromas. Alas, he who wields the theurgy of the gods has no rivals in the lands of Iscar but those foolish enough to challenge their wrath. When confronted by this ancient and destructive force, the renegades have no choice but to flee the capital and embark on the airship of Iscar's most notorious sky corsair Captain Feras Sadahl, daughter of the late pirate sovereign. Their meeting with the corsair, however, might not have been as welcome as they would have hoped. As Farrah and her allies set out on a journey to find the means to challenge their oppressor, they soon discover that the price of power is steep and the road to get one's hands on it, perilous.

Technology of the Gods

Technology of the Gods
Author: David Hatcher Childress
Publisher: Adventures Unlimited Press
Total Pages: 356
Release: 2000
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780932813732

Technology of the Gods lays out the mind-bending evidence that long-lost civilizations had attained and even exceeded our "modern" level of advancement. Westerners have been taught that humankind has progressed along a straight-line path from the primitive past to the proficient present, but the hard, fast evidence (literally written in stone!) proves that the ancients had technologies we cannot even replicate today.

Flight of the Nighthawks

Flight of the Nighthawks
Author: Raymond E. Feist
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 402
Release: 2009-10-13
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0061794783

The New York Times bestselling author revisits his signature world of Midkemia in this first book in a new trilogy that ushers in the third, and most dramatic, Riftwar yet: the Darkwar Flight of Nighthawks picks up two years after Exile’s Return as Pug, the powerful sorcerer, awakens from a nightmare that portends destruction for all of Midkemia. Disturbed by his dream, Pug calls for a convening of the Conclave of Shadows. Meanwhile, in a small town on the other side of Midkemia, two young brothers are coming of age. As they travel away from home, towards apprenticeships and adulthood, the boys are attacked by bandits and mistakenly transported to Sorcerer’s Isle, the home of the Conclave of Shadows. Though they are untrained and unready, the brothers will join the powerful, mysterious Conclave to confront Midkemia’s most looming evil yet—the Nighthawks, assassins feared throughout the centuries. And Pug will face his old nemesis, the evil wizard formerly known as Sidi, now Leso Varen, in a confrontation with everything at stake: his honor, his life, and the future of Midkemia.

Return Flight

Return Flight
Author: Jennifer Huang
Publisher: Milkweed Editions
Total Pages: 79
Release: 2022-01-18
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 1571317171

Selected by Jos Charles as the winner of the 2021 Ballard Spahr Prize for Poetry, Return Flight is a lush reckoning: with inheritance, with body, with trauma, with desire—and with the many tendons in between. When Return Flight asks “what name / do you crown yourself,” Huang answers with many. Textured with mountains—a folkloric goddess-prison, Yushan, mother, men, self—and peppered with shapeshifting creatures, spirits, and gods, the landscape of Jennifer Huang’s poems is at once mystical and fleshy, a “myth a mess of myself.” Sensuously, Huang depicts each of these not as things to claim but as topographies to behold and hold. Here, too, is another kind of mythology. Set to the music of “beating hearts / through objects passed down,” the poems travel through generations—among Taiwan, China, and America—cataloging familial wounds and beloved stories. A grandfather’s smile shining through rain, baby bok choy in a child’s bowl, a slap felt decades later—the result is a map of a present-day life, reflected through the past. Return Flight is a thrumming debut that teaches us how history harrows and heals, often with the same hand; how touch can mean “purple” and “blue” as much as it means intimacy; and how one might find a path toward joy not by leaving the past in the past, but by “[keeping a] hand on these memories, / to feel them to their ends.”

The End of the World

The End of the World
Author: Fantasy Flight Games
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2015
Genre: Role playing
ISBN: 9781633441880

The supernatural enters the physical world in Wrath of the Gods, the second book in The End of the World roleplaying line! With the scenarios included in this book, you can take up arms with heroes of yore and the Norse gods, or flee from the mind-bending terror of Cthulhu. You may hide from the Four Horsemen as the events of Revelation take place, speak to Quetzalcoatl as the Mayan apocalypse unfolds, or battle wild beasts as Earth itself turns on us. Wrath of the Gods brings you as close as you can (safely) come to supernatural powers ending civilization! This roleplaying game offers you the chance to play as yourself during the tumult of the apocalypse, using an elegant, narrative ruleset. Wrath of the Gods contains five unique scenarios, each offering a different take on the end of humanity by divine wrath. Each scenario also contains an apocalypse and a post-apocalypse, allowing you to survive the initial panic and make your way in life after the world's ending.