Search results for ""Pennsylvania State University Press""

In this study, Wu explores how the concepts honor, shame, and guilt function in the book of Ezekiel, as well as in the wider contexts of their general use in anthropological or social-scientific approaches to biblical studies. He frames Ezekiel’s key terms for honor (kabod), shame (bosh), and guilt ('awah) within an analysis of a broad perspective on these terms in the body of the Old Testament as a way of forming the “concept spheres” within which the specific instances of each term in Ezekiel sit. Wu gleans insight from the dominant contemporary definitions of honor, shame, and guilt in the fields of psychology and anthropology and their application to biblical studies, and he reflects on how this broader context informs and is informed by his analysis of Ezekiel. The study concludes by drawing together the implications and contribution of the analysis of Ezekiel and applying them to the development of social-scientific models for the future.

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This comprehensive study of Rome’s contribution to the early history of photography traces the medium’s rise from a fledgling science to a dynamic form of artistic expression that forever changed the way we perceive the Eternal City.The authors examine the diverse transnational group of photographers who thrived in the cosmopolitan art center of Rome—and the pivotal role they played in the refinement and technical development of the nascent medium in the nineteenth century. The book ranges from the earliest pioneers—the French daguerreotypist Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey and the Welsh calotypist Calvert Richard Jones—to the work of the Roman School of Photography and its successors, among them James Anderson and Robert Macpherson of Britain; Frédéric Flachéron, Firmin Eugène Le Dien, and Gustave Le Gray of France; and Giacomo Caneva, Adriano de Bonis, and Pietro Dovizielli of Italy.Lavishly illustrated with 112 plates, many never before published, by nearly fifty practitioners, this volume expands our understanding of the place of Rome in early photography. An exhibition of the same title, to open at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art in December 2022, accompanies this study.

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Transhumanism is widely misunderstood, in part because the media have exaggerated current technologies and branded the movement as dangerous, leading many to believe that hybrid humans may soon walk among us and that immortality, achieved by means of mind-uploading, is imminent. In this essential and clarifying volume, Stefan Lorenz Sorgner debunks widespread myths about transhumanism and tackles the most pressing ethical issues in the debate over technologically assisted human enhancement.On Transhumanism is a vital primer on the subject, written by a world-renowned expert. In this book, Sorgner presents an overview of the movement’s history, capably summarizing the twelve pillars of transhumanist discourse and explaining the great diversity of transhumanist responses to each individual topic. He highlights the urgent ethical challenges related to the latest technological developments, inventions, and innovations and compares the unique cultural standing of transhumanism to other cultural movements, placing it within the broader context of the Enlightenment, modernity, postmodernity, and the philosophical writings of Nietzsche. Engagingly written and translated and featuring an introduction for North American readers, this comprehensive overview of the cultural and philosophical movement of transhumanism will be required reading for students of posthumanist philosophy and for general audiences interested in learning about the transhumanist movement.

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In this moving account of the life, work, and ethics of four Jewish women intellectuals in the world of the Holocaust, Rachel Feldhay Brenner explores the ways in which these women sought to maintain their faith in humanity while aware of intensifying destruction. She argues that through their written responses of autobiographical self-assertion, Edith Stein, Simone Weil, Anne Frank, and Etty Hillesum resisted the Nazi terror in ways that defy its horrifying dehumanization.Personal identity crises engendered the intellectual-spiritual acts of autobiographical self-searching for each of these women. About to become a nun in 1933, Edith Stein embarked on her autobiography as a daughter of a Jewish family. Fleeing France and deportation in 1942, Simone Weil examined her inner struggle with faith and the Church in her "Spiritual Autobiography." Hiding for more than two years in the attic, Anne Frank poignantly confided in her diary about her efforts to become a better person. Having volunteered as a social worker in Westerbork, Etty Hillesum searched her soul for love in the reality of terror. In each case, autobiographical writing becomes an act of defiance that asserts humanity in a dehumanized/dehumanizing world.By focusing on the four women's accomplishments as intellectuals, writers, and thinkers, Brenner's account liberates them from other posthumous treatments that depict them as symbols of altruism, sanctity, and victimization. Her approach also elucidates the particular predicament of Western Jewish intellectuals who trusted the ideals of the Enlightenment and believed in human fellowship. While suffering the terror of physical annihilation decreed by the Final Solution, these Jews had to contend with their exclusion from the world that they considered theirs. On yet another level, this study of four extraordinary life stories contributes to a deeper understanding of the postwar development of ethical, theological, and feminist thought. In showing concern about a world that had ceased to care for them, Stein, Weil, Frank, and Hillesum demonstrated that the meaning of human existence consisted in the responsibility for the other, in the protection of the suffering God, in the primary value of relatedness through empathy. Arguing that their ethical tenets anticipated the thought of such postwar thinkers as Levinas, Fackenheim, Tillich, Arendt, and Nodding, Brenner proposes that the breakup of the humanist tradition of the Enlightenment in the Holocaust engendered the postwar exploration of humanist potential in self-givenness to the other.

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Although listening is central to human interaction, its importance is often ignored. In the rush to speak and be heard, it is easy to neglect listening and disregard its significance as a way of being with others and the world. Drawing upon insights from phenomenology, linguistics, philosophy of communication, and ethics, Listening, Thinking, Being is both an invitation and an intervention meant to turn much of what readers know, or think they know, about language, communication, and listening inside out. It is not about how to be a good listener or the numerous pitfalls that stem from the failure to listen. Rather, the purpose of the book is, first, to make readers aware of the value and importance of listening as a fundamental human ability inextricably connected with language and thought; second, to alert readers to the complexity of listening from personal, cultural, and philosophical perspectives; and third, to offer readers a way to think of listening as a mode of communicative action by which humans create and abide in the world. Lisbeth Lipari brings together historical, literary, intercultural, scientific, musical, and philosophical perspectives, as well as a range of her own personal experiences, to produce this highly readable analysis of how “the human experience of being as an ethical relation with others . . . is enacted by means of listening.”

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