Search results for ""The Last Books""
Oxford University Press Inc After the War: The Last Books of the Mahabharata
After the War is a new translation of the final part of the Mahabharata, the great Sanskrit Epic poem about a devastating fraternal war. In this aftermath of the great war, the surviving heroes find various deaths, ranging from a drunken debacle in which they kill many of their own comrades to suicide through meditation and, finally, magical transportation to both heaven and hell. Bereaved mothers and widows on earth are comforted when their dead sons and husbands are magically conjured up from heaven and emerge from a river to spend one glorious night on earth with their loved ones. Ultimately, the bitterly opposed heroes of both sides are reconciled in heaven, but only when they finally let go of the vindictive masculine pride that has made each episode of violence give rise to another. Throughout the text, issues of truth and reconciliation, of the competing beliefs in various afterlives, and of the ultimate purpose of human life are debated. This last part of the Mahabharata has much to tell us both about the deep wisdom of Indian poets during the centuries from 300 BCE to 300 CE (the dates of the recension of this enormous text) and about the problems that we ourselves confront in the aftermath of our own genocidal and internecine wars. The author, a distinguished translator of Sanskrit texts (including the Rig Veda, the Laws of Manu, and the Kamasutra), puts the text into clear, flowing, contemporary prose, with a comprehensive but unintrusive critical apparatus. This book will delight general readers and enlighten students of Indian civilization and of great world literature.
£17.40
The Last Books Wood Circle
£12.50
The Last Books A Talk on Rhyme
£9.37
The Last Books figurae
£15.00
The Last Books Meditations
£16.00
The Last Books The Letters of Douglas Oliver and J. H. Prynne, 1967–2000
£24.00
The Last Books Repetition
£15.00
New Directions Publishing Corporation Zen and the Birds of Appetite
"Zen enriches no one," Thomas Merton provocatively writes in his opening statement to Zen and the Birds of Appetite—one of the last books to be published before his death in 1968. "There is no body to be found. The birds may come and circle for a while... but they soon go elsewhere. When they are gone, the 'nothing,' the 'no-body' that was there, suddenly appears. That is Zen. It was there all the time but the scavengers missed it, because it was not their kind of prey." This gets at the humor, paradox, and joy that one feels in Merton's discoveries of Zen during the last years of his life, a joy very much present in this collection of essays. Exploring the relationship between Christianity and Zen, especially through his dialogue with the great Zen teacher D.T. Suzuki, the book makes an excellent introduction to a comparative study of these two traditions, as well as giving the reader a strong taste of the mature Merton. Never does one feel him losing his own faith in these pages; rather one feels that faith getting deeply clarified and affirmed. Just as the body of "Zen" cannot be found by the scavengers, so too, Merton suggests, with the eternal truth of Christ.
£11.73
The Catholic University of America Press The Eucharist in Modern Philosophy
The Eucharist in Modern Philosophy is one of the last books written by the renowned Jesuit philosopher Xavier Tilliette (1921–2018), and the first to be translated into English. Jonathan Martin Ciraulo, the translator, also provides an introduction to the thought of Tilliette and the content of this book, while Cyril O'Regan provides the foreword, noting the particular intellectual characteristics of Tilliette and his analysis of eucharistic philosophies.In addition to being known as one of the foremost experts on the German Idealist Friedrich Schelling, Tilliette wrote voluminously on the relationship between modern philosophy and theology, particularly concerning the way in which Christology is central to the development of modern philosophy. In this volume, he extends that project to look at how various philosophers, such as Descartes, Leibniz, Hegel, Blondel, and Marion, as well as poets and mystics, such as de Chardin, Simone Weil, and Paul Claudel, thought extensively about the question of the Eucharist. The result is an enormous diversity of Eucharistic thought, from Descartes' attempt to justify transubstantiation in light of his philosophical revolution, to Feuerbach's supposed exposure of the contradiction inherent to sacramentality, to Antonio Rosmini's Eucharistic piety and speculation, to Maurice Blondel's recovery and expansion of Leibniz's notion of the substantial bond. Tilliette shows that this philosophical conversation about the Eucharist is a living tradition, as the aporias and failures of one generation provide stimulus for all that follows. Much of the work is largely historical, showing in great detail the context of each particular eucharistic philosophy, but Tilliette also evaluates the relative fruitfulness of the various eucharistic theories for philosophy, theology, and the life of the Church. This book demonstrates that the Eucharist has been, and will likely continue to be, a major impetus for philosophical reflection.
£34.95