ALL THINGS SHINING: READING THE WESTERN CLASSICS TO FIND MEANING IN A SECULAR AGE PDF, EPUB, EBOOK

Hubert Dreyfus,Sean Dorrance Kelly | 272 pages | 10 Nov 2011 | SIMON & SCHUSTER | 9781416596165 | English | New York, United States All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age PDF Book Homers Polytheism. He made a choice. Other editions. Instead, they offer Sport as the modern experience of the divine. This book is intended to bring them close once more. Leave a Reply Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. Rather, its audience is those living in the wake of monotheism, people who cannot regard believing in God as a serious option but still have sensibilities shaped by a recently monotheistic culture. To ask other readers questions about All Things Shining , please sign up. But All Things Shining is intended for a nonspecialist audience, and we hope it will speak to a wide range of people. Other Editions No trivia or quizzes yet. In short, the problem is the need for a middle path between two tempting, though in the authors' view bankrupt, positions. God had to be unrepresentable. But the attempt fails and despair ensues. Sep 19, Luna Saint Claire rated it it was amazing. Their examples of finding the shining things come from the Greeks and their gods, the last professional full time wheelwright, Herman Melville, whose white whale graces the cover of the book, David Foster Wallace and Elizabeth Gilbert When the Greeks were blessed with good fortune, cursed with bad, or captivated by whatever passion the gods brought them, they fully embraced it, allowing it to consume their attention until, like all shining things, it passed. Like writing is for Gilbert Eat Pray Love. Anyone who wants to lure back the shining things, to uncover the wonder we were once capable of experiencing and to reveal a world that sometimes calls forth such a mood; anyone who is done with indecision and waiting, with expressionlessness and lostness and sadness and angst, and who is ready for whatever it is that comes next; anyone with hope instead of despair, or anyone with despair that they would like to leave behind, can find something worthwhile in the pages ahead. Aug 10, Angie Boyter rated it it was ok. But it may just as easily be something as pernicious as a Nazi rally. This sou I'm so grateful to the friend who sent me this book, and someday when I have more time I'd love to write a full review of it, especially as it has garnered so much praise. They're not so much into polytheism, which is itself a worldview that is totalizing as they are into "polytheistic truth claims", by which, I think they mean dabbling in this and that and enjoying it. All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age Writer

This sort of involvement can bring coffee consumption to the level of a craft, as one develops "the skill for knowing how to pick exactly the right coffee, exactly the right cup, exactly the right place to drink it, and to cultivate exactly the right companions to drink it with" The charismatic man who can find his way anywhere but is nowhere at home is a prototype of modern ambivalence — down to the love for his wife that coexists with the enjoyment of other erotic attachments too deep to be called flings. This book will change the way we understand our culture, our history, our sacred practices, and ourselves. The multiple Greek deities personify multiple, sometimes incompatible, ideals, any of which could lend significance to ancient lives. This contemporary Polytheistic world will be a wonderful world of sacred shining things. Members save with free shipping everyday! It was also enjoyable to read authors I disagree with who say things like, whatever diety or system of belief one's gratitude is directed toward is totally irrelevent. I never finished reading "Moby Dick", even though it was an assignment for a high school English class. Rather -- in the authors' perhaps too memorable phrase -- it whooshes over us, leaving no room for reflection, cynicism, or doubt. Return to Book Page. Some other philosophical ideals the authors believe our secular age should seek: - But gratitude to what, if God does not exist? If this were true, then perhaps we could wait for continuing urbanization to overwhelm the rural element of our society. If our culture no longer takes for granted a belief in God, can we nevertheless get in touch with the Homeric moods of wonder and gratitude, and be guided by the meanings they reveal? Both Japan and Germany renounced militarism after their defeat in , and 70 years later they remain committed to nonviolent resolution of conflict. Yeats What a title. Friend Reviews. has done some excellent work on interpreting Heidegger, and I actually enjoyed that short documentary he did about Being in Time. Better to ask whether Dreyfus and Kelly give us a helpful description of the -- or at least a -- state of characteristic of our age. It offers a new—and very old—way to celebrate and be grateful for our existence in the modern world. Rawls claims that the good -- the significant -- life for human beings involves the development and exercise of complex skills. This is counter-intuitive but in many ways, it's true. In medieval Europe, God's calling was a grounding force. Jun 07, Ellen added it Shelves: Get a FREE e-book by joining our mailing list today! All Things Shining says we can. The authors' initial emphasis on the experience of physis, and neutrality towards the content that inspires it, deepens this worry, but they eventually acknowledge and address the threat. But it's not that simple. It was about something — a resurgence of democracy, a victory against racism, a rebirth of American dreams — as well as the sense that it was something that millions not only cheered on, but had a hand in bringing about. Their Wallace tries to apply a Nietzschean solution, inserting significance into the world through individual acts of will. We can feel the meditative bliss of being caught up in a moment of gratitude or acceptance. It reminded me of Richard Sennett's work on craftsmanship. Supported by a wide range NOOK Book. Feb 07, Michelle Schwarze rated it did not like it. Uh-oh, it looks like your Internet Explorer is out of date. Now that I've studied with Dr. You may or may not buy the argument, but it is an accessible argument. Poiesis orients the craftsman. When the crowd responds to the game-winning home run, they write, "there is no question of ironic distance from the event. They leave no room for the human indecision that plagues us all. Is Wallace's assertion even achievable to Dante's standards? Dante's free will has been brought to the forefront. I only read Homer fairly recentl I very much enjoyed the literary criticism parts of this book, but was less enchanted with the final "self-help" chapters. All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age Reviews

Dreyfus and Kelly encourage us to assimilate this skill of discernment to the wheelwright's ability to discern which wood is appropriate for his wheel, calling it metapoiesis. Learn how your comment data is processed. It could be a storehouse of truth, a la Paul. Dreyfus belongs to an older generation of academics. It's up to you to find the balance. Physis gives us focus and community and is overwhelming, it doesn't have to be sport. Enhanced patriotism, citizens became something they did not want to let go of, and they built a tragic kingdom. Error rating book. It begins with polytheism. Brilliant insights and well-thought themes from the literature reviewed. You may or may not buy the argument, but it is an accessible argument. While they spend too much time on sports metaphors, the authors clear note the downside of losing oneself in the crowd. Works bring focus and energize a group of people. Being free from the shackles of religion, superstition, fate, and god-ordained kings should be empowering and joyful. I only read Homer fairly recentl I very much enjoyed the literary criticism parts of this book, but was less enchanted with the final "self- help" chapters. In such ways a mundane activity can become a ritual that preserves a sense of significance or even of the sacred. Reading this book is like overhearing a pair of college professors over-explain an to someone who's never been to college. In sports, there are moments of that overflow with meaning. As well, it makes me want to read, for the first time, the contemporary writings of David Foster Wallace which are at the heart of our existential questioning. May 08, Aileen rated it really liked it. Videos About This Book. Like an athlet An unrelenting flow of choices confronts us at nearly every moment of our lives, and yet our culture offers us no clear way to choose. These qualities, they believe, can be cultivated to provide a bulwark against the nihilism they rightly view as threatening our ability to lead meaningful lives in the 21st century. His enchanting blend of literary and scholarly qualities makes stories that played Javascript is not enabled in your browser. This book serves as a guided introduction to the richly diverse perspectives on leadership throughout the ages and throughout the world. Escape the Present with These 24 Historical Romances. The authors never make entirely clear what they mean by a "final" or "ultimate" account. This sort of involvement can bring coffee consumption to the level of a craft, as one develops "the skill for knowing how to pick exactly the right coffee, exactly the right cup, exactly the right place to drink it, and to cultivate exactly the right companions to drink it with" The example, which might have been harvested straight from the Crate and Barrel catalog, doesn't help here. You stuck close to your clan and followed its beliefs. I tend to agree with Nietzsche who is typically misinterpreted, once again, in this book - everything after the Greeks is just an unnecessary, confusing tangent. Much like Jared Diamond's The World Until Yesterday , which explores what contemporary Western civilization can learn from traditional societies, All Things Shining looks back to the classics to explore how we can address the "indecision and sadness" that characterize contemporary life. Ten classic westerns from arguably some of the top western writers of all time. If someone was a white supremicist, for example, and worshiped a god that shared that worldview, his gratitude to said god would be quite different in kind from the gratitude practiced by an egalitarian.

All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age Read Online

Otherwise, it was a mish-mash of woo-infected academic BS trying to pass itself off as "secular. But though the authors mean not just to educate but to inspire as well, the weakest part of their book its closing chapter has precious too little of the advice they promise for the wonder-lorn. Then things got This book sounded so interesting I talked my Sunday Philosophers group into choosing it for our discussion this month. The postmodern cultural establishment is philosophically empty and esthetically corrupt. Kant: I alone, and this is maturity. The first is the "temptation to monotheism," which they trace to the rise of Christianity. A truly valuable book to read bringing philosophy, , and literature together. A chapter on Melville's polytheism in Moby Dick is brilliant and if they wrote this as a term paper in my sophomore English class I would give them an A. Kelly, chair of the philosophy department at , is an eloquent new voice whose sensitivity to the sadness of the culture— and to what remains of the wonder and gratitude that could chase it away—captures a generation adrift. His enchanting blend of literary and scholarly qualities makes stories that played Homers Polytheism. This predicament seems inevitable, but in fact it's quite new. Hubert Dreyfus. Jan 29, Candice rated it liked it. There is an aspect of meta-hilarity to see Kelly tell this to Stephen Colbert on the Colbert Report , the show that is perhaps most representative of our culture's inability to treat anything as sacred. Error rating book. Sean Dorrance Kelly , the chair of Harvard's philosophy department, tackles the first two introductory chapters on contemporary nihilism and David Foster Wallace. In the Middle Ages, for better or worse, nearly everyone believed that God created them and determined their fate. Instead of situating persons in an enchanted universe where the gods charge reality with meaning, Christian monotheism, as articulated by the Apostle Paul and Saint Augustine, inaugurated the West on its decline towards a desacralized universe the authors admit that much of their thought is influenced by C. For an alternative they take us back to Homeric Greece, suggesting that these polytheists long ago laid the safe path between the unsatisfiable longing for an external source of ultimate meaning and the inevitable disappointment of subjectivism. Brilliant insights and well-thought themes from the literature reviewed. Many of the philosophical concerns are valid, as are many of the historical philosophies they look to for insight, but the authors formulate the contradictory proposition of a universal claim that many things are true the one thing that is true is that many things are true. I get the feeling that a lot of us, privileged Americans, as we enter our early 30s, have to find a way to put away childish things and confront stuff about spirituality and values. To gain the greater, larger view, you have to have many many more discussions with Professor Dreyfus. So it is easy to see why, over the last century, an increasingly professionalized discipline agreed to treat them as inappropriate for grown-up philosophers, notwithstanding the interest they held for grown-ups such as Plato and Kant. May 08, Aileen rated it really liked it. One might worry that this argument founders on an equivocation on "significance. Background practice of Hebrew of being. Gods grace is constant and unconditional. The authors suggest nothing - it is already there of course and we just need to notice it. I think this book really shines in the descriptive, but falls short on the proscriptive. Community Reviews. He has taught at UC Berkeley for more than 40 years. I very much enjoyed the literary criticism parts of this book, but was less enchanted with the final "self-help" chapters. But then i This book was interesting, although I was not sure I liked it until I got all the way through it. Favorite part of this book was the chapter on Melville. Most urbanites understand the need for tolerance; most of the resistance to multicultural secularism comes from more rural communities. Greek physis is about meaningful events, not causal particles. https://files8.webydo.com/9583072/UploadedFiles/022DF7EE-E29C-31C5-09FB-06673BB75E8D.pdf https://files8.webydo.com/9583634/UploadedFiles/8F75C887-AE76-480B-EA6F-F12FF55F1173.pdf https://cdn.starwebserver.se/shops/nourmattssonuu/files/oliver-who-was-small-but-mighty-102.pdf https://files8.webydo.com/9584460/UploadedFiles/AC3A8F57-45EF-2809-DEE3-DE611813F4D9.pdf https://files8.webydo.com/9584502/UploadedFiles/D399345C-CC2F-739E-9C04-BFDF8E1CC5C1.pdf