Search results for ""Author Espen Dahl""

The American philosopher Stanley Cavell (b. 1926) is a secular Jew who by his own admission is obsessed with Christ, yet his outlook on religion in general is ambiguous. Probing the secular and the sacred in Cavell's thought, Espen Dahl explains that Cavell, while often parting ways with Christianity, cannot dismiss it either. Focusing on Cavell's work as a whole, but especially on his recent engagement with Continental philosophy, Dahl brings out important themes in Cavell's philosophy and his conversation with theology.

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Thanks to the recent "return to religion", the holy has become a relevant issue in public debate, as is suggested by concepts such as "re-sacralization" and "re-enchantment". Holy war and religiously motivated terrorist attacks, the fascination in popular culture for subjects such as the Holy Grail (as in Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code), new spiritual longings both within and outside institutional religion - all testify to the new religious climate. This situation calls for a reassessment of both classical and new theories about the holy. Espen Dahl offers a theoretical account of the holy. Central to its approach is the idea that the holy cannot be reduced to one stable essence, but is fundamentally composite and takes place "in between". This means that the typical modern dichotomies between the holy and the profane, the pure and the impure, the pious and the violent, cannot be drawn as sharply as scholars once did. Instead, the manifestation of the holy takes place in the interstice between those spheres. Such a position is not strong - it attests to the weakness of the holy. Through a critical dialogue with the most influential recent contributions, various theories and responses to them are presented on the basis of the book's overall perspective. Espen Dahl deals with various theoretical perspectives, corresponding to the numerous dimensions of the holy. Phenomenology plays the principal role, because it offers the best means to preserve the experiential dimensions which are essential to the holy. From this perspective, the book discusses theories from religious science, theology, philosophy, and psychology.

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This book contributes to the growing literature on social investment by discussing the way social investment ideas have been adopted in different countries and in various academic and professional fields, including social policy, development studies and non-profit management. Documenting the experience of implementing social investment in different communities, it encourages a One World perspective that integrates these diverse experiences and promotes policy learning between different nations. This book fills a major gap in the literature, which, in the past, has focused largely on European welfare states and their employment and educational policies. Contrary to the view that social investment is a new stage in the development of these welfare states, it shows that social investment has been endorsed in other countries and in different policy fields for many years, including housing, child welfare, community development, social protection and rural development. The contribution to social investment by international development organizations such as the United Nations, World Bank and International Labour Organization are discussed, specifically looking at how they have encouraged the application of social investment policies in development. This book is primarily targeted at an academic readership that has become increasingly interested in social investment ideas in recent years. However, it will also be a useful resource for post-graduate and upper-level undergraduate students in social development, development studies, sociology, social policy, social work and public policy.Contributors include: S. Cook, A. Conley Wright, E. Dahl, A. Hall, K. Halvorsen, J. Lee, J.C.B. Leung, T. Lorentzen, J. Midgley, A. Østertun Geirdal, L. Patel, S. Pellissery, S. Stjernø, A.G. Tøge, Y. Xu

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