The Play of Goodness

The Play of Goodness
Author: Jacob Benjamins
Publisher: Fordham Univ Press
Total Pages: 166
Release: 2024-10-15
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1531508901

One of the enduring claims in the Christian tradition is that creation is good. Given the diversity of experience and the abundance of suffering in the world, however, such an affirmation is not always straightforward. The Play of Goodness provides a phenomenology of creation’s goodness that clarifies the ongoing relevance of the doctrine today. It argues that what is “good” about creation is not synonymous with a confession of faith and does not require an overly optimistic disposition, but instead appears within diverse and often surprising circumstances. Alongside original contributions to French phenomenology and creation theology, The Play of Goodness counterbalances a tendency in continental philosophy to focus on negative phenomena. By developing the philosophical concept of a prelinguistic experience of goodness, the book identifies a quality of goodness that is integral to the place in which we find ourselves. It also articulates shared points of contact among people in an increasingly polarized world, while demonstrating that distinctly theological concepts do not need to be presented in opposition to secular, agnostic, or atheist perspectives in order to be relevant. Benjamins develops an account of creation’s goodness that has the potential to animate an abiding affection for one’s place, accentuate our reasons to care for it, and confirm that what happens in our lives is of genuine significance.

Goodness

Goodness
Author: Michael Redhill
Publisher: Coach House Books
Total Pages: 116
Release: 2005
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 9781552451632

This remarkable autobiographical play by the award-winning author of Building Jerusalem and Martin Sloane, is a Russian-doll-like play: concentric stories enveloping each other. A writer is told, in confidence, a terrible tale of murder and injustice and he promises never to repeat the story. Goodness is the writer breaking his word. Recently divorced, Michael Redhill goes to Poland to get away frm his life and to do some research on the Holocaust. Thwarted by witnesses unwilling to talk, he returns home via England, but in London is introduced to someone who can tell him a 'real' story of evil. Through this reluctant witness, Redhill learns of a genocide. He encounters, through the memory of the storyteller, an alleged war criminal, about to be put on trial. But this is an old man with Alzheimer's who can no longer remember the time his crimes were allegedly committed. Has his guilt dissolved with his memory? Could he be pretending to be ill in order to escape punishment? The witness conjures for Redhill the war criminal's passionate and beautiful daughter, who will defend her father at all costs. There is also the prosecuting attorney, who has much in common with the old man whose destruction he seeks. As well as an uncomfortable attraction to his daughter. Each is drawn to the other. All is witnessed by a female prison guard - the one who tells the playwright, years later, what really happened in the quest to give a nation some closure. Everyone's story is compelling, and the ending is as unexpected as it is shocking. Who do we believe? A prison guard still wounded by history? A writer suffering from heartache? A dying war criminal? What is our responsibility? Who does memory serve? Did the past really happen? And if it did, who has a claim on it? Goodness is a play about what happens in the gaps between experiencing, telling and hearing.

The Plays

The Plays
Author: William Shakespeare
Publisher:
Total Pages: 790
Release: 1859
Genre:
ISBN:

Touch and Go

Touch and Go
Author: David Herbert Lawrence
Publisher:
Total Pages: 112
Release: 1920
Genre: English drama
ISBN:

Against Absolute Goodness

Against Absolute Goodness
Author: Richard Kraut
Publisher: OUP USA
Total Pages: 237
Release: 2011-12-02
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0199844461

Richard Kraut argues that goodness is not a reason-giving property--in fact, there may be no such thing.

The Play's the Thing

The Play's the Thing
Author: Marina Jenkyns
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2006-10-19
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1134821840

Marina Jenkyns conveys the excitement of working therapeutically with dramatic text though a personal and highly readable analysis of plays from a variety of periods and cultures. Influenced by the theories of Winnicott and Klein she lays bare the dynamics of relationships and plots to show how they can be used to help us understand our own relationships to each other and the world around us. This highly innovative text integrates therapeutic practice and literature in an engaging and challenging book which will hold the attention of a wide audience. This book contains new ideas for dramatherapy practice, theatre directors and teachers.

The Good Occupation

The Good Occupation
Author: Susan L. Carruthers
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 397
Release: 2016-11-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674972929

Waged for a just cause and culminating in total victory, World War II was America’s “good war.” Yet for millions of GIs overseas, the war did not end with Germany and Japan’s surrender. The Good Occupation chronicles America’s transition from wartime combatant to postwar occupier, by exploring the intimate thoughts and feelings of the ordinary servicemen and women who participated—often reluctantly—in the difficult project of rebuilding nations they had so recently worked to destroy. When the war ended, most of the seven million Americans in uniform longed to return to civilian life. Yet many remained on active duty, becoming the “after-army” tasked with bringing order and justice to societies ravaged by war. Susan Carruthers shows how American soldiers struggled to deal with unprecedented catastrophe among millions of displaced refugees and concentration camp survivors while negotiating the inevitable tensions that arose between victors and the defeated enemy. Drawing on thousands of unpublished letters, diaries, and memoirs, she reveals the stories service personnel told themselves and their loved ones back home in order to make sense of their disorienting and challenging postwar mission. The picture Carruthers paints is not the one most Americans recognize today. A venture undertaken by soldiers with little appetite for the task has crystallized, in the retelling, into the “good occupation” of national mythology: emblematic of the United States’ role as a bearer of democracy, progress, and prosperity. In real time, however, “winning the peace” proved a perilous business, fraught with temptation and hazard.

Teaching

Teaching
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages: 686
Release: 1921
Genre: Education
ISBN:

The Theatre

The Theatre
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages: 342
Release: 1890
Genre: Actors
ISBN:

Vol. for 1888 includes dramatic directory for Feb.-Dec.; vol. for 1889 includes dramatic directory for Jan.-May.

I Never Did Repent for Doing Good

I Never Did Repent for Doing Good
Author: David Ian Hopp
Publisher: David Ian Hopp
Total Pages: 202
Release: 2009
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1439240736

Lovers of Shakespeare's plays will delight in this companion reader that dissects plot construction and character development as well provides a look at England during the 1590s.