Radical Nothingness

Radical Nothingness
Author: Lara C. Collins
Publisher: Strategic Book Publishing
Total Pages: 205
Release: 2008-09-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1606933507

Collins explains that only in pure abandonment can true freedom be found and only in that freedom can Christians begin to discover God.

An Anthropology of Nothing in Particular

An Anthropology of Nothing in Particular
Author: Martin Demant Frederiksen
Publisher: John Hunt Publishing
Total Pages: 130
Release: 2018-08-31
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 178535700X

There have been claims that meaninglessness has become epidemic in the contemporary world. One perceived consequence of this is that people increasingly turn against both society and the political establishment with little concern for the content (or lack of content) that might follow. Most often, encounters with meaninglessness and nothingness are seen as troubling. "Meaning" is generally seen as being a cornerstone of the human condition, as that which we strive towards. This was famously explored by Viktor Frankl in Man’s Search for Meaning in which he showed how even in the direst of situations individuals will often seek to find a purpose in life. But what, then, is at stake when groups of people negate this position? What exactly goes on inside this apparent turn towards nothing, in the engagement with meaninglessness? And what happens if we take the meaningless seriously as an empirical fact?

Radical Monotheism and Western Culture

Radical Monotheism and Western Culture
Author: Helmut Richard Niebuhr
Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
Total Pages: 160
Release: 1993-01-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780664253264

This reissue of a classic work of H. Richard Niebuhr, one of the most influential and creative theological ethicists of the twentieth century, highlights his mature thinking. By using path-breaking interpretations of faith as a basic dimension of human life and culture as an arena of faith in conflict, Niebuhr encourages further thought. This volume should be required reading for anyone interested in recent perspectives on theology and ethics. The Library of Theological Ethics series focuses on what it means to think theologically and ethically. It presents a selection of important and otherwise unavailable texts in easily accessible form. Volumes in this series will enable sustained dialogue with predecessors though reflection on classic works in the field.

Zhuangzi and the Becoming of Nothingness

Zhuangzi and the Becoming of Nothingness
Author: David Chai
Publisher: SUNY Press
Total Pages: 218
Release: 2019-01-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1438472676

Explores the cosmological and metaphysical thought in the Zhuangzi from the perspective of nothingness. Zhuangzi and the Becoming of Nothingness offers a radical rereading of the Daoist classic Zhuangzi by bringing to light the role of nothingness in grounding the cosmological and metaphysical aspects of its thought. Through a careful analysis of the text and its appended commentaries, David Chai reveals not only how nothingness physically enriches the myriad things of the world, but also why the Zhuangzi prefers nothingness over being as a means to expound the authentic way of Dao. Chai weaves together Dao, nothingness, and being in order to reassess the nature and significance of Daoist philosophy, both within its own historical milieu and for modern readers interested in applying the principles of Daoism to their own lived experiences. Chai concludes that nothingness is neither a nihilistic force nor an existential threat; instead, it is a vital component of Dao’s creative power and the life-praxis of the sage. “Chai provides an elaborate philosophical meontological interpretation of the ontology/cosmology found in the Zhuangzi and the implications for existential practice. It’s a close, careful, but in many respects quite original reading of the classic that contributes significantly to the field of philosophical Daoist studies.” — Geir Sigurðsson, author of Confucian Propriety and Ritual Learning: A Philosophical Interpretation

Nothing

Nothing
Author: Marcus Boon
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2015-10-16
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 022623326X

The three extended essays in this book provide a set of much-needed inquiries into the connections between Buddhism and critical theory. Both Buddhism and critical theory struggle with the same contemporary forces, from ecological peril to psycho-social violence, and they both offer radically negative critiques of the present as well as utopian postures toward the future. Like other books in the innovative TRIOS series, this one offers readers ambitious essays produced through long-standing conversation among three challenging thinkers. The first essay, by Marcus Boon, explores the politics of sunyata or emptiness as they emerged from 1936 to 1976 in the wake moments of political crisis for both Buddhism and Marxism. Boon illuminates the role of Buddhism in the work of the French philosopher Georges Bataille, the Buddhist politics of the Tibetan writer Gendun Chopel, and the Buddhist anarchism of Gary Snyder. Eric Cazdyn s essay reveals a shared function between the Buddhist category of enlightenment, the Marxist category of revolution, and the psychoanalytic category of cure. The third essay in this trio, by Timothy Morton, explores a phenomenon he calls Buddhaphobia, a fear of Buddhism he attributes to modernity s anxieties about nothingness. Morton argues that critical theory can speak to our dark ecological future only if it attends to current forms of economic and social nihilismand challenge in which Buddhism can serve critical theory as an ally."

A Reading of Anxiety

A Reading of Anxiety
Author: Christian Fierens
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2024-11-29
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1040252907

A Reading of Anxiety follows the sessions of Lacan’s Seminar X, examining its presentation of the structure of anxiety, step by step. Christian Fierens considers why and how the structure of anxiety always depends on speech even if it remains on the threshold between the symbolic and the real and explains that there is a genuine connection between anxiety and the Lacanian object a which puts in doubt the obviousness of any object. The book then explores the importance of anxiety for the practice of the analyst, determines that the object a is fundamentally void and discusses encountering nothingness. Finally, Fierens establishes that this nothingness inside the object and inside anxiety leads to the truth of anxiety. A Reading of Anxiety will be an essential book for students as well as clinicians to find a practical way to cope with anxiety as a clinical approach to the real in psychoanalysis. It will be relevant to all readers interested in the work of Lacan.

Heidegger and Dao

Heidegger and Dao
Author: Eric S. Nelson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 463
Release: 2023-11-02
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1350411922

In this innovative contribution, Eric S. Nelson offers a contextualized and systematic exploration of the Chinese sources and German language interpretations that shaped Heidegger's engagement with Daoism and his thinking of the thing, nothingness, and the freedom of releasement (Gelassenheit). Encompassing forgotten and recently published historical sources, including Heidegger's Daoist and Buddhist-related reflections in his lectures and notebooks, Nelson presents a critical intercultural reinterpretation of Heidegger's philosophical journey. Nelson analyzes the intersections and differences between the Daodejing, the Zhuangzi, and Heidegger's philosophy and the linguistic and conceptual shifts in Heidegger's thinking that correlate with his encounters and interactions with Daoist, Buddhist, and East Asian texts and interlocutors. He thereby traces hints for encountering things and environments anew, models for intercultural hermeneutics, and ways of reimagining the thing, nothingness, and freedom with and beyond Heidegger's thought. This work elucidates the thing, the mystery, and freedom in Heidegger and Daoism in Part I and Heidegger's thinking of nothingness, emptiness, and the clearing in relation to Daoist and Buddhist philosophy in Part II. In each part, Nelson unfolds a fresh perspective for thinking further with Heidegger and East Asian philosophies in relation to the contemporary existential and environmental situation for the sake of nourishing life amidst damaged life.

Looking Beyond?

Looking Beyond?
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 535
Release: 2012-01-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9401207526

Religion is undergoing a transformation in current Western society. In addition to organized religions, there is a notable movement towards spirituality that is not associated with any institutions but in which experiences and notions of transcendence are still important. Transcendence can be described as God, the absolute, Mystery, the Other, the other as alterity, depending on one’s worldview. In this book, these shifts in the views of transcendence in various areas of culture such as philosophy, theology, art, and politics are explored on the basis of a fourfold heuristic model (proposed by Wessel Stoker). In conversation with this model, various authors, established scholars in their fields, explain the meaning and role, or the critique, of transcendence in the thought of contemporary thinkers, fields of discourse, or cultural domains. Looking Beyond? will stimulate further research on the theme of transcendence in contemporary culture, but can also serve as a textbook for courses in various disciplines, ranging from philosophy to theology, cultural studies, literature, art, and politics.

The Routledge Handbook of Material Religion

The Routledge Handbook of Material Religion
Author: Pooyan Tamimi Arab
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 479
Release: 2023-09-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1351176226

The Routledge Handbook of Material Religion places objects and bodies at the center of scholarly studies of religious life and practice. Propelling forward the study of material religion, the Handbook first reveals the deep philosophical roots of its key categories and then advances new critical analytics, such as queer materialities, inescapable material entanglements, and hyperobjects that explode the small-scale personal view on religions. The Handbook comprises thirty chapters, written by an international team of contributors who offer a global perspective of religious pasts and presents, divided into four thematic parts: Genealogies of Material Religion Materializing the Terms of the Study of Religion Entanglements, Entrapment, Escaping Hyperobjects, or How Ginormous Things Affect Religions In these four parts, the study of material religion is redirected towards systematic, critical interrogations of the imbrication of religious structures of power with racial, economic, political, and gendered forms of domination. From Spinoza’s political theology to African philosophies of ubuntu; from the queer materialities of Mesoamerican religion to the Satanic Temple of the United States; from Islamic love and sacrifice in human-animal entanglements to Shia militants’ attachment to weaponry; from epidemic cataclysm in Latin America to vast infrastructures and the gathering of millions in India’s Kumbh Mela, the study of material religion proves to be the study par excellence of the human condition. The Handbook is essential reading for students and researchers in religious studies, anthropology, history, and media studies, and will also be of interest to those in related fields such as archeology, sociology, and philosophy.

Between Heidegger and Novalis

Between Heidegger and Novalis
Author: Peter Hanly
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
Total Pages: 300
Release: 2021-03-15
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0810143267

This book brings a central figure of the early German Romantic movement—the poet and philosopher Novalis—into dialogue with the work of Martin Heidegger. Looking beyond the question of direct influence, the book demonstrates that Novalis and Heidegger pursued complementary endeavors as thinkers of relation. Implicitly operative in their thinking, Peter Hanly argues, is an excavation of the Greek conception of harmonia found in the fragments of the pre-Socratic thinker Heraclitus. This is a conception that understands harmony not as concordance but as primal dissonance. It is this experience of harmonia, Hanly proposes, that allows both Novalis and Heidegger to think relation in terms of dynamic and contradictory energies of separation and convergence. Between Heidegger and Novalis thus is a study of the “in-between,” associated in Novalis with energies of fertility and productivity and in Heidegger with energies of agonistic difference. An entirely new approach to both Novalis and Heidegger, this book will interest scholars and students engaged with continental philosophy and the legacy of German Romanticism.