Search results for ""University of Notre Dame Press""

“Bolle’s passion for hermeneutics and his conviction that the study of religion becomes really interesting when students confront not only the fascinating data of religion, but also the demanding methodological and epistemological questions of the discipline, make this book an inspiration to read.” —Jess Hollenback, University of Wisconsin, La Crosse "In The Enticement of Religion, Kees W. Bolle has written an accessible and informative introduction to the basic facts of religion and to the ways scholars and other people have dealt with religion over the centuries. Bolle’s central purpose is to provide a serious, in-depth study that will introduce students and other general readers to religion and religious events in the world. Part 1 of the book focuses on the facts of religion, and covers such topics as the object and task of the historian of religions, the correct usage of words like “faith” and “tradition,” modes of religious expression, and the social and political impact of religion. Bolle raises basic, yet not often discussed, questions such as “What is Religion?” and “What are the Religions of the World?” The second part of the book provides a historical survey of Western intellectual approaches to religion. Starting with the Greeks and progressing all the way to the twentieth century, Bolle explores how writers and scholars such as David Hume, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Soren Kierkegaard, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Joseph Conrad, Charles Péguy, and many others have influenced our judgments on religion. The Enticement of Religion is the product of Kees Bolle’s lifelong quest for understanding of religion. As a sustained essay on hermeneutics (he prefers ‘epistemology’), it is, indeed, an enticing alternative to the post-modernist studies in critical discourse so pervasive in today’s intellectual world—a refreshingly innovative approach free of subservience to current fashion.” —William W. Malandra, University of Minnesota “This book will serve well undergraduate majors in religious studies, students commencing graduate study in the field, and anyone interested in religion and religions who wishes to be introduced to the major issues, problems, and thinkers emergent in the context of western intellectual history. Bolle’s probings are worthy of the careful attention of all who are open to being seriously engaged in the data of religions.” —Stanley Lusby, University of Tennessee, Knoxville

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Dark Light of Love, John S. Dunne's twenty-third book, was written before his death on November 11, 2013. Dunne, called by Christian Century "one of the most serious and original theologians in the country," continues his quest of faith seeking understanding. In this new book he examines darkness as a metaphor for unknowing and the unknown. If dark light is like physical light traveling through the darkness of outer space, invisible until it strikes an object, then the dark light of love is the kindly light that leads us by the heart, one step at a time, toward God. In this slender, deeply meditative work, Dunne engages with a rich variety of sources—literature, theology, philosophy, and music—in an effort to elaborate how "the dark light of love" illuminates a soul in the process whereby it is "oned" with God through emergence, separation, and finally union. As Paul Kollman observes in the foreword, by examining his own knowing and his own loving in that process, Dunne leads us to reconsider our own knowing and loving, thereby shining light on the puzzles that perplex each of us.

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Cement, Earthworms, and Cheese Factories examines the ways in which religion and community development are closely intertwined in a rural part of contemporary Latin America. Using historical, documentary, and ethnographic data collected over more than a decade as an aid worker and as a researcher in central Ecuador, Jill DeTemple examines the forces that have led to this entanglement of religion and development and the ways in which rural Ecuadorians, as well as development and religious personnel, negotiate these complicated relationships. Technical innovations have been connected to religious change since the time of the Inca conquest, and Ecuadorians have created defensive strategies for managing such connections. Although most analyses of development either tend to ignore the genuinely religious roots of development or conflate development with religion itself, these strategies are part of a larger negotiation of progress and its meaning in twenty-first-century Ecuador. DeTemple focuses on three development agencies—a liberationist Catholic women's group, a municipal unit dedicated to agriculture, and evangelical Protestant missionaries engaged in education and medical work—to demonstrate that in some instances Ecuadorians encourage a hybridity of religion and development, while in other cases they break up such hybridities into their component parts, often to the consternation of those with whom religious and development discourse originate. This management of hybrids reveals Ecuadorians as agents who produce and reform modernities in ways often unrecognized by development scholars, aid workers, or missionaries, and also reveals that an appreciation of religious belief is essential to a full understanding of diverse aspects of daily life.

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Students of English literature now rarely receive instruction in versification (theory or practice) at either the undergraduate or the graduate level. The Long and the Short of It is a clear, straightforward account of versification that also functions as an argument for a renewed attention to the formal qualities of verse and for a renewed awareness of the forms and traditions that have shaped the way we think about English verse. After an introduction and discussion of basic principles, Joseph A. Dane devotes a chapter to quantitative verse (Latin), syllabic or isosyllabic verse (French), and accentual verse (Old English/Germanic). In addition to basic versification systems, the book includes a chapter on musical forms, since verse was originally sung. Most serious studies of these systems in English have been designed for language students, and are not accessible to students of English literature or general readers. This book will enable the reader to scan verse in all three systems, and it will also provide a framework within which students can understand points of contention about particular verse forms. The guide includes a chapter addressed to teachers of English, an appendix with examples of verse types, and a glossary of commonly used terms.

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Volume 2 of The Writings of Charles De Koninck carries on the project begun by volume 1 of presenting the first English edition of the collected works of the Catholic Thomist philosopher Charles De Koninck (1906–1965). Ralph McInerny (1929–2010) was the project editor and prepared the excellent translations. This volume begins with two works published in 1943: Ego Sapientia: The Wisdom That Is Mary, De Koninck's first study in Mariology, and The Primacy of the Common Good Against the Personalists (with The Principle of the New Order), which generated a strong critical reaction. Included in this volume are two reviews of The Primacy of the Common Good, by Yves R. Simon and I. Thomas Eschmann, O.P., and De Koninck's substantial response to Eschmann in his lengthy “In Defence of St. Thomas.” The volume concludes with a group of short essays: “The Dialectic of Limits as Critique of Reason,” “Notes on Marxism,” “This Is a Hard Saying,” “[Review of] Between Heaven and Earth,” and “Concept, Process, and Reality.”

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In Deep Rhythm and the Riddle of Eternal Life, John S. Dunne’s twentieth book, he examines the end of earthly life and the prospect of eternal life. He begins with two questions: Is death an event of life? Is death lived through? If we answer yes to both questions, then we face “the riddle of eternal life.” This book explores that riddle. Dunne finds his answer in the Gospel of John, with its three great metaphors of life, light, and love. Dunne contemplates the meaning of the metaphors in “deep rhythm,” the deep rhythm of rest in the restlessness of the heart. The words of eternal life in the Gospel speak of life and light and love but also of life passing through death, of light passing through darkness, of love passing through loneliness. So, too, Christ, embodying life and light and love, passes through death and darkness and loneliness. This deeply meditative book from one of our most gifted spiritual writers and teachers will offer consolation to those at the end of life as well as hope for all readers who contemplate eternal life.

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In Deep-Rooted Things, Rob Doggett examines Yeats's shifting relationship with the warring discourses of British cultural imperialism and Irish nationalism during Ireland's transition from colony to partially independent nation. By focusing on key historical events that Yeats witnessed and on the nationalist movements he both embraced and resisted, Doggett identifies the core features of Yeats's aesthetic program through new readings of central poems and plays in the Yeats canon. Doggett presents Yeatsian nationalism as a fluid category, a series of masks that Yeats adopted, rejected, and re-created throughout his life. He casts Yeats's continual artistic reinvention—his privileging of contradiction over resolution—as repeated attempts to provide in art some foundations for national unity. He reveals Yeats's deep and often conflicted response to issues of identity, history, and nationhood—issues always central to discourses of colonization, colonial resistance, and postcolonialism. Because Yeats's writings are so intimately linked with the development of Ireland as a nation, Deep-Rooted Things will place Yeats—both a canonical "British" high modernist and an ambivalent Irish nationalist—at the center of debates concerning the relationship between modernist studies and postcolonial theory. Deep-Rooted Things is organized around two historical periods—the first decade of the twentieth century, when Yeats was involved in the creation and promotion of the Irish National Theatre Society; and the period from 1919 to 1928, when Yeats the artist and senator struggled to reinvent himself as a cultural nationalist against the backdrop of the Anglo-Irish War, the Irish Civil War, and the consolidation of the Irish Free State. A rich and rewarding reading of Yeats that places the poetry and plays in a new context, Deep-Rooted Things will interest students of literary criticism and Irish studies.

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William Desmond, taking issue with typical assessments of the ancient Cynics, contends that figures such as Antisthenes and Diogenes were not cultural outcasts or marginal voices in the classical culture of the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. Rather, the Cynic movement had deep and significant roots in what Desmond calls "the Greek praise of poverty." Desmond demonstrates that classical attitudes toward wealth were complex and ambivalent, and allowed for an implicit praise of poverty and the virtues it could inspire. From an economic and political point of view, the poor majority at Athens and elsewhere were natural democrats who distrusted great concentrations of wealth as potentially oligarchical or tyrannical. Hence, the poor could be praised in contemporary literature for their industry, honesty, frugality, and temperance. The rich, on the other hand, were often criticized as idle, unjust, arrogant, and profligate. These perspectives were reinforced by typical Greek experiences of war, and the belief that poverty fostered the virtues of courage and endurance. Finally, from an early date, Greek philosophers associated wisdom with the transcendence of sense experience and of such worldly values as wealth and honor. The Cynics, Desmond asserts, assimilated all of these ideas in creating their distinctive and radical brand of asceticism. Theirs was a startling and paradoxical outlook, but it had broad appeal and would persist to exert a manifold influence in the Hellenistic period and beyond.

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Aspiring to Fullness in a Secular Age, whose title is inspired by Charles Taylor's magisterial A Secular Age, offers a host of expert analyses of the religious and theological threads running throughout Taylor’s oeuvre, illuminating further his approaches to morality, politics, history, and philosophy. Although the scope of Taylor’s insight into modern secularity has been widely recognized by his fellow social theorists and philosophers, Aspiring to Fullness focuses on Taylor's insights regarding questions of religious experience. It is with a view to such experience that the volume’s contributors consider and assess Taylor’s broad analysis of the limits and potentialities of the present age in regard to human fullness or fulfillment. The essays in this volume address crucial questions about the function and significance of religious accounts of transcendence in Taylor’s overall philosophical project; the critical purchase and limitations of Taylor’s assessment of the centrality of codes and institutions in modern political ethics; the possibilities inherent in Taylor’s brand of post-Nietzschean theism; the significance and meaning of Taylor’s ambivalence about modern destiny; the possibility of a practical application of his insights within particular contemporary religious communities; and the overall implications of Taylor’s thought for theology and philosophy of religion. Although some commentators have referred to a recent religious “turn” in Taylor’s work, the contributors to Aspiring to Fullness in a Secular Age examine the ways in which transcendence functions, both explicitly and implicitly, in Taylor’s philosophical project as a whole.

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Like their predecessors throughout the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI have emphasized the importance of philosophy in the Catholic intellectual tradition. In his encyclical Fides et ratio (1998), John Paul II called on philosophers “to have the courage to recover, in the flow of an enduringly valid philosophical tradition, the range of authentic wisdom and truth.” Where the late pope spoke of an “enduringly valid tradition,” Jacques Maritain and other Thomists often have referred to the “perennial tradition” or to “perennial philosophy.” Words of Wisdom responds to John Paul's call for the development of this tradition with a much-needed dictionary of terms. As a resource for students in colleges, universities, and seminaries, as well as for teachers of the perennial tradition and interested general readers, Words of Wisdom occupies a unique place. It offers precise, yet clear and understandable accounts of well over a thousand key philosophical terms, richly cross-referenced. It also explains significant terms from other philosophical movements with which Thomism (and the Catholic intellectual tradition more generally) has engaged—either through debate or through judicious and creative incorporation. Moreover, it identifies a number of theological and doctrinal expressions to which perennial philosophy has contributed. Finally, it provides a comprehensive bibliography of works by Aquinas in English, expositions and discussions of perennial themes, and representative examples from the writings of all philosophers and theologians mentioned in dictionary entries.

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Written for undergraduates, the educated layperson, and scholars in fields other than philosophy, The Myth of Religious Neutrality offers a radical reinterpretation of the general relations between religion, science, and philosophy. This new edition has been completely revised and updated by the author.

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The Liber de causis (De causis et processu universitatis a prima causa), a monotheistic reworking of Proclus’ Elements of Theology, was translated from Arabic into Latin in the twelfth century, with an attribution to Aristotle. Considering this Neoplatonic text a product of Aristotle's school and even the completion of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Albert the Great concluded his series of Aristotelian paraphrases by commenting on it. To do so was to invite controversy, since accidents of translation had made many readers think that the Liber de causis taught that God made only the first creature, which in turn created the diverse multitude of lesser things. Thus, Albert’s contemporaries in the Christian West took the text to uphold the supposedly Aristotelian doctrine that from the One only one thing can emanate—a doctrine they rejected, believing as they did that God freely determined the number and kinds of creatures. Albert, however, defended the philosophers against the theologians of his day, denying that the thesis "from the One only one proceeds" removed God’s causality from the diversity and multiplicity of our world. This Albert did by appealing to a greater theologian, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, and equating the being that is the subject of metaphysics with the procession of Being from God's intellect, a procession Dionysius described in On the Divine Names. Creation as Emanation examines Albert's reading of the Liber de causis with an eye toward two questions: First, how does Albert view the relation between faith and reason, so that he can identify creation from nothing with emanation from God? And second, how does he understand Platonism and Aristotelianism, so that he can avoid the misreadings of his fellow theologians by finding in a late-fifth-century Neoplatonist the key to Aristotle’s meaning?

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"For years, I've wondered in amazement how Walt McDonald does what he does, poem after poem, book after book. He sings like no one else. In Climbing the Divide, McDonald has made his strongest collection of poems yet." —David Citino, author of The News and Other Poems "Climbing the Divide must have been written with a pen Walt McDonald dipped into his heart. Crisscrossing generations, poems detail watching a grandfather with knuckles the size of walnuts carve a grizzly bear out of oak, taking car keys away from a father 'who drove tanks for Patton' and thinking about nights in the jungle of Vietnam while pushing a granddaughter in a swing because her father is training overseas for Desert Storm. Binding us to his Texas world in sensual detail about men with big-boned fists who inhabit a land where the moon pockmarks the sky, Walt McDonald refuses to let moments of communion be swallowed by 'war on every channel.' His poems stay lodged in the heart to remind us why we need to celebrate, even in a world that threatens to drown out song." —Vivian Shipley, author of When There Is No Shore "I spent one whole amazing fall morning engrossed in this book. What impresses me most is the love and music and startling intelligence with which, for all of us, Walt McDonald charts the territory beyond mid-life." —Jeanne Murray Walker The poems in Climbing the Divide celebrate with praise and amazement the wonders and risks of wilderness and family, of friends before and after the war. The boy in these poems grows up during World War II, feisty in spite of losses and the harsh, hardscrabble land where he lives. Surrounded by heroes, he learns ranching and faith from parents, extended family, and neighbors. In pilot training and war and back home with friends and memories of friends missing in action, he finds delight with his wife, who makes "magical hammocks at bedtime" for their children. Despite heartache and rage, they discover more hope and joy than they thought possible while growing older—jogging at 65 in winter, hiking grizzly country with bells, and "climbing the divide," knowing they're nearer each day to "the dark, hollow halo of space."

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Tracing the development of progressive Catholic approaches to political and economic modernization, Catholic Intellectuals and the Challenge of Democracy disputes standard interpretations of the Catholic response to democracy and modernity in the English-speaking world—particularly the conventional view that the Church was the servant of right-wing reactionaries and authoritarian, patriarchal structures. Starting with the writings of Bishop Wilhelm von Ketteler of Germany, the Frenchman Frédérick Ozanam, and England’s Cardinal Henry Edward Manning, whose pioneering work laid the foundation of the Catholic "third way," Corrin reveals a long tradition within Roman Catholicism that championed social activism. These visionary writers were the forerunners of Pope John XXIII’s aggiornamento, a call for Catholics to broaden their historical perspectives and move beyond a static theology fixed to the past. By examining this often overlooked tradition, Corrin attempts to confront the perception that Catholicism in the modern age has invariably been an institution of reaction that is highly suspicious of liberalism and progressive social reform. Catholic Intellectuals and the Challenge of Democracy charts the efforts of key Catholic intellectuals, primarily in Britain and the United States, who embraced the modern world and endeavored to use the legacies of their faith to form an alternative, pluralistic path that avoided both socialist collectivism and capitalism. In this sweeping volume, Corrin discusses the influences of Cecil and G. K. Chesterton, H. A. Reinhold, Hilaire Belloc, and many others on the development of Catholic social, economic, and political thought, with a special focus on Belloc and Reinhold as representatives of reactionary and progressive positions, respectively. He also provides an in-depth analysis of Catholic Distributists’ responses to the labor unrest in Britain prior to World War I and later, in the 1930s, to the tragedy of the Spanish Civil War and the forces of fascism and communism.

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In the face of religious and cultural diversity, some doubt whether Christian faith remains possible today. Critics claim that religion is irrational and violent, and the loudest defenders of Christianity are equally strident. In response, Desire, Faith, and the Darkness of God: Essays in Honor of Denys Turner explores the uncertainty essential to Christian commitment; it suggests that faith is moved by a desire for that which cannot be known. This approach is inspired by the tradition of Christian apophatic theology, which argues that language cannot capture divine transcendence. From this perspective, contemporary debates over God’s existence represent a dead end: if God is not simply another object in the world, then faith begins not in abstract certainty but in a love that exceeds the limits of knowledge. The essays engage classic Christian thought alongside literary and philosophical sources ranging from Pseudo-Dionysius and Dante to Karl Marx and Jacques Derrida. Building on the work of Denys Turner, they indicate that the boundary between atheism and Christian thought is productively blurry. Instead of settling the stale dispute over whether religion is rationally justified, their work suggests instead that Christian life is an ethical and political practice impassioned by a God who transcends understanding.

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Recent changes imposed by the Vatican may redefine the Chilean and Peruvian Church's involvement in politics and social issues. Fleet and Smith argue that the Vatican has been moving to restrict the Chilean and Peruvian Church's social and political activities. Fleet and Smith have gathered documentary evidence, conducted interviews with Catholic elites, and compiled surveys of lay Catholics in the region. The result will help chart the future of the Church and Chile and Peru.

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Prophets of the Posthuman provides a fresh and original reading of fictional narratives that raise the question of what it means to be human in the face of rapidly developing bioenhancement technologies. Christina Bieber Lake argues that works by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Walker Percy, Flannery O'Connor, Toni Morrison, George Saunders, Marilynne Robinson, Raymond Carver, James Tiptree, Jr., and Margaret Atwood must be reevaluated in light of their contributions to larger ethical questions. Drawing on a wide range of sources in philosophical and theological ethics, Lake claims that these writers share a commitment to maintaining a category of personhood more meaningful than that allowed by utilitarian ethics. Prophets of the Posthuman insists that because technology can never ask whether we should do something that we have the power to do, literature must step into that role. Each of the chapters of this interdisciplinary study sets up a typical ethical scenario regarding human enhancement technology and then illustrates how a work of fiction uniquely speaks to that scenario, exposing a realm of human motivations that might otherwise be overlooked or simplified. Through the vision of the writers she discusses, Lake uncovers a deep critique of the ascendancy of personal autonomy as America’s most cherished value. This ascendancy, coupled with technology’s glamorous promises of happiness, helps to shape a utilitarian view of persons that makes responsible ethical behavior toward one another almost impossible. Prophets of the Posthuman charts the essential role that literature must play in the continuing conversation of what it means to be human in a posthuman world.

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Lisa Kaaren Bailey's Christianity's Quiet Success: The Eusebius Gallicanus Sermon Collection and the Power of the Church in Late Antique Gaul is the first major study of the Eusebius Gallicanus collection of anonymous, multi-authored sermons from fifth- and sixth-century Gaul. Bailey sheds new light on these sermons, which were strikingly popular and influential from late antiquity to the High Middle Ages, as the large number of surviving manuscripts attests. They were used for centuries by clergy as a preaching guide and by monks and pious lay people as devotional reading. Bailey's analysis demonstrates the extent to which these stylistically simple and straightforward sermons emphasize consensus, harmony, and mutuality as the central values of a congregation. Preachers encouraged tolerance among their congregants and promoted a model of leadership that placed themselves at the center of the community rather than above it. These sermons make clear the delicate balancing act required of late antique and early medieval pastors as they attempted to explain the Christian faith and also maintain the clerical control considered necessary for a universal church. The Eusebius Gallicanus collection gives us fresh insight into the process by which the Catholic Church influenced the lives of Western Europeans.

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Several presidents have created bioethics councils to advise their administrations on the importance, meaning and possible implementation or regulation of rapidly developing biomedical technologies. From 2001 to 2005, the President’s Council on Bioethics, created by President George W. Bush, was under the leadership of Leon Kass. The Kass Council, as it was known, undertook what Adam Briggle describes as a more rich understanding of its task than that of previous councils. The council sought to understand what it means to advance human flourishing at the intersection of philosophy, politics, science, and technology within a democratic society. Briggle’s survey of the history of U.S. public bioethics and advisory bioethics commissions, followed by an analysis of what constitutes a “rich” bioethics, forms the first part of the book. The second part treats the Kass Council as a case study of a federal institution that offered public, ethical advice within a highly polarized context, with the attendant charges of inappropriate politicization and policy irrelevance. The conclusion synthesizes the author’s findings into a story about the possible relationships between philosophy and policy making. A Rich Bioethics: Public Policy, Biotechnology, and the Kass Council will attract students and scholars in bioethics and the fields of science, technology, and society, as well as those interested in the ethical and political dilemmas raised by modern science.

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Judith M. Brown, one of the leading historians of South Asia, provides an original and thought-provoking strategy for conducting and presenting historical research in her latest book, Windows into the Past. Brown looks at how varieties of "life history" that focus on the lives of institutions and families, as well as individuals, offer a broad and rich means of studying history. Her distinctively creative approach differs from traditional historical biography in that it explores a variety of "life histories" and shows us how they become invaluable windows into the past. Following her introduction, "The Practice of History," Brown opens windows on the history of South Asia. She begins with the life history of an educational institution, Balliol College, Oxford, and tracks the interrelationship between Britain and India through the lives of the British and Indian men who were educated there. She then demonstrates the significance of family life history, showing that by observing patterns of family life over several generations, it is possible to gain insight into the experiences of groups of people who rarely left historical documents about themselves, particularly South Asian women. Finally, Brown uses the life history of two prominent individuals, Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, to examine questions about the nature of Indian nationalism and the emergent Indian state.

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As new democratic regimes take root in Latin America, two of the most striking developments have been a dramatic rise in crime rates and increased perception of insecurity among its citizens. The contributors to this book offer a collective assessment of some of the causes for the alarming rise in criminal activity in the region. They also explore the institutional obstacles that states confront in the effort to curb criminality and build a fairer and more efficient criminal justice system; the connections between those obstacles and larger sociopolitical patterns; and the challenges that those patterns present for the consolidation of democracy in the region. The chapters offer both close studies of restricted regions in Latin America and broader examinations of the region as a whole. The contributors to this volume are prominent scholars and specialists on the issue of citizen security. They draw on the latest methodologies and theoretical approaches to examine the question of how crime and crime fighting impact the consolidation of democracy and the rule of law in the region. These studies represent a major first step towards evaluating broadly a relative dearth of hard data about the Latin American security situation, as well as identifying future research paths. This book will be important for scholars, policy makers, and students, especially in the fields of Latin American and comparative law, political science, sociology, and criminology. Contributors: Laurence Whitehead, Marcelo Bergman, Claudio Chaves Beato, Frederico Couto Marinho, Lucía Dammert, Mark Ungar, Hugo Frühling, Elena Azaola, Elvira María Restrepo, Luis Pásara, Ana Laura Magaloni, and John Bailey.

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These essays, written by eminent scholars from diverse disciplines and perspectives, consider various present-day and historical efforts to make a language dominant through textual, institutional, academic, and literary means. Contributors examine pressures to elevate one language at the expense of another and the cultural and intellectual consequences of that elevation. Specific essays apply this theme of the contest of language to the suppression, survival, and revival of the Irish language; to Greek, Latin, and the emergence of the vernacular in Europe; to the relationship between minority and dominant language in China; and to the lack of linguistic imperialism in the spread of Arabic, among other fascinating topics.

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The new emphasis on spirituality in the workplace has been widely discussed in recent years and reported in major publications such as the Wall Street Journal and Fortune. Spirituality seems to be a basic human good essential for human flourishing. The contributors to this volume are all proponents of spirituality in the workplace, yet all raise important questions about this movement and what it means. What are the moral questions that should guide leaders? Is spirituality being treated as simply an instrumental good, valued for its usefulness in enhancing productivity and well-being? What are the responsibilities of business leaders? Of business schools and their faculty? Of churches? The essayists in this collection reflect on these and other pertinent questions. The common thread linking these authors is that all have distinguished themselves in their respective fields or professions and all wish to advance spirituality in business. Contributors to Business, Religion, and Spirituality provide a sober, but positive, prognosis for this new growth in spirituality while offering direction for the future.

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Breeze, winner of the 2003 Ernest Sandeen Prize in Poetry, exudes a material and musical sensibility, informed as much by the sound of a word as it rolls off the tongue as by the ideas it may trigger. In these carefully crafted poems, John Latta traces the process of language attempting to align its measure against the amplitude of the world. His writing recognizes the futility of representing the world while braving the caprice of trying to do so. Made of image, invention, and music, the poetry of Breeze challenges and inspires.

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The journal Put', or The Way, was one of the major vehicles for philosophical and religious discussion among Russian émigrés in Paris from 1925 until the beginning of World War II. This Russian language journal, edited by Nicholas Berdyaev among others, has been called one of the most erudite in all Russian intellectual history; however, it remained little known in France and the USSR until the early 1990s. This is the first sustained study of the Russian émigré theologians and other intellectuals in Paris who were associated with The Way and of their writings, as published in The Way. Although there have been studies of individual members of that group, this book places the entire generation in a broad historical and intellectual context. Antoine Arjakovsky provides assessments of leading religious figures such as Berdyaev, Bulgakov, Florovsky, Nicholas and Vladimir Lossky, Mother Maria Skobtsova, and Afanasiev, and compares and contrasts their philosophical agreements and conflicts in the pages of The Way. He examines their intense commitment to freedom, their often contentious struggles to bring the Christian tradition as experienced in the Eastern Church into conversation with Christians of the West, and their distinctive contributions to Western theology and ecumenism from the perspective of their Russian Orthodox experience. He also traces the influence of these extraordinary intellectuals in present-day Russia, Western Europe, and the United States. Throughout this comprehensive study, Arjakovsky presents a wealth of arguments, from debates over "Russian exceptionalism" to the possibilities of a Christian and Orthodox version of socialist politics, the degree to which the church could allow its agenda to be shaped by both local and global political realities, and controversies about the distinctively Russian theology of Divine Wisdom, Sophia. Arjakovsky also maps out the relationships these émigré thinkers established with significant Western theologians such as Jacques Maritain, Yves-Marie Congar, Henri de Lubac, and Jean Daniélou, who provided the intellectual underpinnings of Vatican II.

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Arabic literary salons emerged in ninth-century Iraq and, by the tenth, were flourishing in Baghdad and other urban centers. In an age before broadcast media and classroom education, salons were the primary source of entertainment and escape for middle- and upper-rank members of society, serving also as a space and means for educating the young. Although salons relied on a culture of oral performance from memory, scholars of Arabic literature have focused almost exclusively on the written dimensions of the tradition. That emphasis, argues Samer Ali, has neglected the interplay of oral and written, as well as of religious and secular knowledge in salon society, and the surprising ways in which these seemingly discrete categories blurred in the lived experience of participants. Looking at the period from 500 to 1250, and using methods from European medieval studies, folklore, and cultural anthropology, Ali interprets Arabic manuscripts in order to answer fundamental questions about literary salons as a social institution. He identifies salons not only as sites for socializing and educating, but as loci for performing literature and oral history; for creating and transmitting cultural identity; and for continually reinterpreting the past. A fascinating recovery of a key element of humanistic culture, Ali’s work will encourage a recasting of our understanding of verbal art, cultural memory, and daily life in medieval Arab culture.

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Mark Amodio’s book focuses on the influence of the oral tradition on written vernacular verse produced in England from the fifth to the fifteenth century. His primary aim is to explore how a living tradition articulated only through the public, performance voices of pre-literate singers came to find expression through the pens of private, literate authors. Amodio argues that the expressive economy of oral poetics survives in written texts because, throughout the Middle Ages, literacy and orality were interdependent, not competing, cultural forces. After delving into the background of the medieval oral-literate matrix, Writing the Oral Tradition develops a model of non-performative oral poetics that is a central, perhaps defining, component of Old English vernacular verse. Following the Norman Conquest, oral poetics lost its central position and became one of many ways to articulate poetry. Contrary to many scholars, Amodio argues that oral poetics did not disappear but survived well into the post-Conquest period. It influenced the composition of Middle English verse texts produced from the twelfth to the fourteenth century because it offered poets an affectively powerful and economical way to articulate traditional meanings. Indeed, fragments of oral poetics are discoverable in contemporary prose, poetics, and film as they continue to faithfully emit their traditional meanings. Writing the Oral Tradition will appeal to specialists and students interested in medieval literature, medieval cultural studies, and oral theory.

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Water and the Word focuses on a genre of literature written for the education of the Carolingian clergy: Carolingian baptismal instructions. This literature has never been brought together and studied collectively in the context of the books in which it circulated. As a corpus, read in comparison to one another, the baptismal tracts tell how baptism was celebrated and interpreted across Carolingian Europe. At the same time, in their manuscript context, they are an important new source of information regarding the nature and the success of the Carolingian Reform to educate the clergy. This comprehensive study has three major objectives. One is to describe the codices in which the baptismal instructions are found, in order to show what other kinds of material the baptismal tracts were associated with and to show where, how, and by whom these codices were intended to be used. Another is to bring together the baptismal texts and study them systematically. Finally, a third objective is to interpret the Carolingian Reform in light of the baptismal instructions and the manuscripts in which they were copied. Volume 1 of this two-volume set is devoted to analysis and interpretation of the material in volume 2. It is divided into three parts. The first part is concerned with the manuscript context of the baptismal instructions. In the second, the baptismal expositions themselves are analyzed. Part 3 of volume 1 offers some conclusions about the Carolingian Reform. Volume 2 contains the Latin text of sixty-six manuscripts, as well as descriptions, introductions, and a topical survey of the contents of these manuscripts. In its broadest context this study is about the Christianization of Europe—not the superficial conversion of conquered peoples, but the slow replacement of one mindset with another that came about through the education of the people under the care of pastors.

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The essays in this volume offer a critique of From Unity to Pluralism: The Internal Evolution of Thomism by Gerald McCool, SJ. Twelve philosophers in this collection analyse key aspects of McCool's interpretation of Aquinas, which stands opposed to the motivating ideals found in One Hundred Years of Thomism: Aeterni Patris and Afterwards, a symposium published in 1981 to celebrate the centenary of Pope Leo XIII's encyclical Aeterni Patris.

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The Treatise on Happiness and the accompanying Treatise on Human Acts comprise the first twenty-one questions of I-II of the Summa Theologiae. From his careful consideration of what true happiness is, to his comprehensive discussion of how it can be attained, St. Thomas Aquinas offers a challenging and classic statement of the goals of human life, both ultimate and proximate. This translation presents in accurate, consistent, contemporary English the great Christian thinker's enduring contributions on the subject of man's happiness.

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Winner of the Notre Dame Review Book Prize, this ambitious collection of poems evokes the cultural and environmental history of the Mississippi watershed and meditates on how its rivers are ceaselessly shaping, and shaped by, the lives around them. John Shoptaw guides us from the Mississippi’s headwaters in Lake Itasca to its delta in the Gulf of Mexico, weaving together episodes in the life of the river system—the New Madrid earthquakes, the 1927 flood, the EPA’s eradication of the dioxin-laced town of Times Beach—with his own memories of growing up in the Missouri Bootheel: picking cotton, being baptized in a drainage ditch, and working in a lumber mill. Formally renovative, the poems in Times Beach ring the changes on the big muddy place and hymn its everlasting possibilities.

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This book celebrates the University of Notre Dame's Hesburgh Library and its fifty years as a place of evolving service, powerful symbolism, and collaboration. It tells the history of the Library in terms of its meaning to all those who designed it, helped it to become a reality, imbued it with a distinctive identity, and pointed it toward the future. The text by Bill Schmitt and photographs from the University Archives and university photographers give the reader a new appreciation for a building that is central to the university’s history and therefore important to supporters of Notre Dame as a place of special value. Schmitt begins with the Library's dedication day in 1964 and explores what the new building meant to Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, C.S.C., who as president of Notre Dame played a key role in its construction and in defining its characteristics and place at Notre Dame. The book focuses especially on the building’s best-known feature, the iconic mural named The Word of Life but better known to many as “Touchdown Jesus.” Included in the book are numerous photos that transport the reader to the past and enhance an appreciation of the mural and the building for us today.

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The writings and life of Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964) have enjoyed considerable attention both from admirers of her work and from scholars. In this distinctive book, Susan Srigley charts new ground in revealing how O’Connor’s ethics are inextricably linked to her role as a storyteller, and how her moral vision is expressed through the dramatic narrative of her fiction. Srigley elucidates O'Connor's sacramental vision by showing how it is embodied morally within her fiction as an ethic of responsibility. In developing this argument Srigley offers a detailed analysis of the Thomistic sources for O’Connor’s understanding of theology and art. Srigley contends that O’Connor’s ethical vision of responsibility opens a fruitful path for understanding her religious ideas as they are expressed in the lives and loves of her fictional characters. O’Connor’s characters show that responsibility is a living moral action not an abstract code of behavior. For O’Connor, ethical choices are not dictated by religious doctrine, but rather are an engagement with and response to reality. Srigley further argues that O’Connor’s ethics are not systematic, formulaic, or prescriptive. As a storyteller, she explores the moral complexities of life in their most concrete and dramatic form. Behaviors that appear in her fiction such as racism, sexism, or nihilism are exposed as inherently irresponsible. Approaching O’Connor’s fiction from a moral perspective often better illuminates the dramatic struggle of a story, not because it offers a religious solution to a particular issue, but because the choices each character makes reveal a vision of reality that is either meaningful and sustainable or narrow and destructive. Flannery O'Connor's Sacramental Art reveals O’Connor’s role as a prophetic novelist whose moral questions speak to the modern world with rare force. It will be welcomed by anyone who appreciates the moral or religious dimensions of her writing.

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This comprehensive, critical edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is the fruit of William Vantuono's research on the fourteenth-century romance. In combining fantasy and realism, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight praises court life with an undercurrent of satire against a declining chivalric ideal. The poem calls up from the mythic past the shadows of archetypal figures, yet inspires modern psychoanalytic interpretations, and entertains while teaching a moral-religious lesson. The heart of this edition is the Middle English text, with a Modern English verse translation on facing pages and extensive notes at the bottom of the pages. A discussion of the manuscript, the anonymous poet and his other poems, the structure of the poem and its audience, themes, characterization, and purpose serves as a valuable introduction to the classic. With this translation, Vantuono aims to follow the original as closely as possible without sacrificing the poem's essential meaning and mood. The notes reveal the literal sense of the Middle English vocabulary where necessary changes were made for poetic effect. The reader is therefore able to compare the Middle English original, the translation, and the notes to learn about the old language, the content of the poem, the poet's artistry, and the process of translation.

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Ruth Berins Collier and David Collier are political scientists who use comparative historical research to discover and evaluate patterns and sources of political change. Their work is an overall analysis of Chile, Brazil, Uruguay, Colombia, Argentina, Peru, Venezuela, and Mexico, plus case studies of four distinct pairs in that group: Chile/Brazil, Uruguay/Colombia, Argentina/Peru, and Venezuela/Mexico. In addition, the Colliers meticulously describe and discuss their methods for the study including the limitations of their approach. The authors specifically focus on why and how organized labor movements in the first half of the twentieth century were incorporated into the political process in the eight Latin American countries they study. They analyze the role played by political parties, central government control, worker mobilization, and conflict between radical vs. centrist political philosophies and activities.

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In this book (a translation of his well-known work L'esprit de la philosophie medievale), Etienne Gilson undertakes the task of defining the spirit of mediaeval philosophy. Gilson asks whether we can form the concept of a Christian philosophy and whether mediaeval philosophy is not its most adequate historical expression. He maintains that the spirit of mediaeval philosophy is the spirit of Christianity penetrating the Greek tradition, working within it, and drawing out of it a certain view of the world that is specifically Christian. To support his hypothesis, Gilson examines mediaeval thought in its nascent state, at that precise point where the Judeo-Christian graft was inserted into the Hellenic tradition. Gilson's demonstration is primarily historical and occasionally theoretical in suggesting how doctrines that satisfied our predecessors for so many centuries may still be found conceivable today.

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Dunne shows us how we can, through an examination of our own lives and the lives of great writers and philosophers, become closer to "the face underlying all, that of the compassionate God." A Search for God in Time and Memory is an experiment in religious thought. While Catholic in scope and in historical perspective, it bypasses religious authority and official documents to find its sources in the life experiences of individuals. "It is a search," says John S. Dunne, "which will carry us on quests and journeys through life stories, through hells, purgatories and heavens, through ages of life, through stories of God." The quest begins with an examination of one's own life, with an awareness of patterns of its past and the contingencies of its future. The point of individual departure then is to seek comparison and perspective from the lives of great writers and philosophers, finding resonances between their lives and one's own and returning at last to one's own standpoint. It is in this process of "passing over" that one discovers the greater dimensions of man, those which reach beyond the self and the individual life story. This process is ultimately how man "brings time to mind, how he searches through time and memory, for passing over avails him of the time and memory of others, and coming back leaves his own time and memory enriched." In analyzing the stages of life—childhood, youth, manhood, and age—as they appear in modern autobiography, he discovers beneath these life experiences the possibilities of companionship with God in time and "the face underlying all, that of the compassionate God and the Compassionate Savior."

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Born at the time of Waterloo in the wild country of Shropshire, Prudence Sarn is a wild, passionate girl, cursed with a hare lip -- her 'precious bane'. Cursed for it, too, by the superstitious people amongst whom she lives. Prue loves two things: the remote countryside of her birth and, hopelessly, Kester Woodseaves, the weaver. The tale of how Woodseaves gradually discerns Prue's true beauty is set against the tragic drama of Prue's brother, Gideon, a driven man who is out of harmony with the natural world.

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When Dr. Romana Guarnieri, in a letter to Osservatore Romano (16 June 1946), announced her discovery that Margaret Porette (d. 1 June 1310) was the author of The Mirror of Simple Souls, certainly a major French document of pre-Reformation spirituality, a sensation was created in the academic world. Although The Mirror is one of the few heretical documents to have survived the Middle Ages in its entirety, both its title and its authorship were among the most persistent and troublesome problems of scholarly research in the field of medieval vernacular languages. The Mirror, in its original French, survives only in the fifteenth-century manuscript which the great Condé (Louis II de Bourbon) had acquired for his palace at Chantilly. And, so far as can be known, all that remains with which to compare the readings of this manuscript text are those translations of The Mirror which, also in manuscript, are to be found in Latin, Italian, and Middle English. This edition of The Mirror of Simple Souls is a translation from the French original with interpretive essays by Edmund Colledge, O.S.A., Judith Grant, and J.C. Marler, and a foreword by Kent Emery, Jr. The translators of this Modern English version rely primarily on the French, yet take other medieval translations into account. As a result, this edition offers a reading of The Mirror which solves a number of difficulties found in the French, and the introductions contributed by the translators narrate the archival history of the book, for which Margaret Porette was burned alive in Paris in 1310.

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The authors of The Longing for Home explore the notion that home is both a place and a condition of the spirit. While a person may have a place that is home, he or she may also be nostalgic for an inner spiritual home which beckons even as it lies beyond the human grasp. Essays by Elie Wiesel, Werner Gundersheimer, and Frederick Buechner complete part one. Part two focuses on philosophical explorations of the meaning of home.

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The dual purpose of this volume—to provide a distinctively philosophical introduction to logic, as well as a logic-oriented approach to philosophy—makes this book a unique and worthwhile primary text for logic and/or philosophy courses. Logic and Philosophy covers a variety of elementary formal and informal types of reasoning, including a chapter on traditional logic that culminates in a treatment of Aristotle's philosophy of science; a truth-functional logic chapter that examines Wittgenstein's philosophy of language, logic, and mysticism; and sections on induction, analogy, and fallacies that incorporate material on mind-body dualism, pseudoscience, the "raven paradox," and proofs of God. Throughout the book Brenner highlights passages and ideas from various prominent philosophers, and discusses at some length the work of Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, and Wittgenstein.

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Unsportsmanlike behavior by student athletes or parents at youth sporting events happens with regularity these days. Much recent research reveals that young people are dropping out of sport at alarming rates due to the often toxic elements in the culture of youth sports. The timely, innovative essays in Youth Sport and Spirituality present a wide-ranging overview that draws on resources from Catholic spiritual and theological traditions to address problems such as these, as well as opportunities in youth sport in the United States. The book consists of two sections. In the first, prominent scholars in philosophy, psychology, theology, and spirituality reflect on how youth sport contributes to the integral development of the person and his or her grasp of spiritual values. The second half of the book consists of chapters written by coaches, athletic directors, and specialists working with youth coaches. These practitioners share how their approaches to working with youth in sport contribute to the integral development of their players and their openness to transcendent values. The essays examine coaching as ministry, youth sport and moral development, and how parents can act as partners in youth sports, among other topics. The book will interest coaches, athletic directors, and youth ministers in Catholic elementary and high schools in parish settings, as well as undergraduate and graduate students in education who are preparing to teach in Catholic schools. Contributors: Patrick Kelly, SJ, Daniel A. Dombrowski, Nicole M. LaVoi, Mike McNamee, Clark Power, David Light Shields, Brenda Light Bredemeier, Richard R. Gaillardetz, Kristin Komyatte Sheehan, Dobie Moser, Jim Yerkovich, Sherri Retif, James Charles Naggi, and Edward Hastings.

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Mark W. Roche presents a clear, precise, and positive view of the challenge and promise of a Catholic university. Roche makes visible the ideal of a Catholic university and illuminates in original ways the diverse, but interconnected, dimensions of Catholic identity. Roche’s vision of the distinct intellectual mission of a Catholic university will appeal to Catholics as well as to persons who are not Catholic but who may recognize through this essay the unexpected allure of a Catholic university.

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Since the original publication of this title, the twelfth-century Calabrian Abbot Joachim of Fiore has been accorded an increasingly central position in the history of medieval thought and culture. In this classic work Marjorie Reeves shows the wide extent of Joachimist influence from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries and demonstrates the continuity between medieval and Renaissance thought in the field of prophecy. Reeves pinpoints some of the most original aspects of Joachim's theology of history and traces his reputation and influence through succeeding centuries. She also explains how his vision of a final age of the spirit in history became a powerful force in shaping expectations of the future in Western Europe. The book traces in detail the development of the three great images in which these expectations came to be focused: New Spiritual Men, Angelic Pope, and Last World Emperor. In addition, Reeves illuminates how the pervading influence of Joachim's concepts of a future golden age forms the basis for an understanding of prophetic visions in later centuries.

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"The Idea of a University [is an] eloquent defense of a liberal education which is perhaps the most timeless of all [Newman’s] books and certainly the one most intellectually accessible to readers of every religious faith and of none. . . . [O]nly one who has read The Idea of a University in its entirety, especially the nine discourses, can hope to understand why its reputation is so high: why the first reading of this book has been called an ‘epoch’ in the life of a college man; why Walter Pater thought it ‘the perfect handling of a theory’; why the historian G. M. Young has ranked it with Aristotle’s Ethics among the most valuable of all works on the aim of Education; or why Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch told his students at Cambridge that ‘of all the books written in these hundred years there is perhaps none you can more profitably thumb and ponder.’” —from the introduction by Martin J. Svaglic

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Herbert Marcuse called the preface to Hegel's Phenomenology "one of the greatest philosophical undertakings of all times." This summary of Hegel's system of philosophy is now available in English translation with commentary on facing pages. While remaining faithful to the author's meaning, Walter Kaufmann has removed many encumbrances inherent in Hegel's style.

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We are living in an exciting and challenging era, characterized by what many are calling globalization—the integration of economic activity on an international scale. It involves unparalleled movements not only of capital but also of goods and services, technologies, and people. Globalization is perceived as both a promise and a threat. The promise is seen in the rising prosperity experienced by many in rich and poor countries alike in the aftermath of international linkages. The threat is the growing perception, by nations and individuals, that we can no longer control our way of life. Whether it be corporate downsizing, takeovers, bankruptcies, human rights abuses, or the loss of jobs, the pace of change and the disruption of communities is very troubling to many. We are experiencing a growing call for a global ethic. From various parts of the world, proposals are emerging for a new global code of conduct, along with an ever-increasing concern for the promotion and protection of human rights in developing countries. To further the discussion on global codes of conduct, the University of Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Religious Values in Business presents the reflections of a group of distinguished leaders from business, the academy, and other parts of civil society. This resulting collection asks important questions for us to consider in the rush toward globalization: What is the next step in this chorus of activity? Should we try to move toward one global code of conduct? What accountability structures are helpful? Global Codes of Conduct: An Idea Whose Time Has Come will be of value to all readers interested in the emerging global economy. It will be particularly useful as a textbook for courses in business ethics.

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This classic of Christian apologetics seeks to persuade the skeptic that there are good reasons to believe in God even though it is impossible to understand the deity fully. First written over a century ago, the Grammar of Assent speaks as powerfully to us today as it did to its first readers. Because of the informal, non-technical character of Newman's work, it still retains its immediacy as an invaluable guide to the nature of religious belief. A new introduction by Nicholas Lash reviews the background of the Grammar, highlights its principal themes, and evaluates its philosophical originality.

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