An Intelligent Person's Guide to Religion

Author: John Haldane
Publisher: Overlook Press
ISBN: 9781585677221
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
We live, allegedly, in a postmodern age in which we have cast aside the narrative fantasies of the pre-modern era. If postmodernism represents the final abandonment of all grand theories, where does religion stand? If religion is a particularly unbelievable form of explanation, why does it power still affect social and political change? Here, like the skeptics of our age, the author asks, What has theology ever had to say that was of the slightest use to anyone? He argues that religion without God is like a car without an engine, and draws on many aspects of human culture to offer a defense of religion that is not only credible but necessary in an age when postmodernism itself has been exposed as a cruel illusion.

An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Education

Author: Tony Little
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472913124
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Book Description
'A hugely reassuring, common-sense guide no parent of teenage boys should be without.' - Sunday Times In his bestselling An Intelligent Person's Guide to Education, Tony Little, former Head Master of Eton College, asks the fundamental questions about how we should make our schools and schoolchildren fit for the modern world. This book will enlighten teachers, students and anxious parents alike, providing advice from the author's many years as a teacher, headmaster and governor in both independent schools and academies, in answer to the key issues concerning education. Tony Little explains the research behind how teenagers' brains function and how they act accordingly, discusses how to deal with sex, drugs and poor discipline, reassesses the meaning of 'character' in a child's education, and provides his own list of books every bright 16-year-old should read. In addition, he offers tips for parents on dealing with adolescents and communicating with their child's school. Drawing on a lifetime's work in schools, An Intelligent Person's Guide to Education is a refreshing, rational and original take on the most important stage in a child's development. An entertaining and essential book for teachers, parents and students interested in how education should serve our young people, now and in future.

An Intelligent Person's Guide to Philosophy

Author: Roger Scruton
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101174056
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 177

Book Description
"Philosophy's the 'love of wisdom', can be approached in two ways: by doing it, or by studying how it has been done," so writes the eminent philosopher Roger Scruton. In this user-friendly book, he chooses to introduce philosophy by doing it. Taking the discipline beyond theory and "intellectualism," he presents it in an empirical, accessible, and practical light. The result is not a history of the field but a vivid, energetic, and personal account to guide the reader making his or her own venture into philosophy. Addressing a range of subjects from freedom, God, reality, and morality, to sex, music, and history, Scruton argues philosophy's relevance not just to intellectual questions, but to contemporary life.

An Intelligent Person's Guide to Atheism

Author: Daniel Harbour
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
ISBN: 9780715632291
Category : Atheism
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
A controversial study that argues for the value of atheism in modern society. The debate about atheism has staled since the time of Bertrand Russell. In this work, Daniel Harbour returns to its core issues - the existence of God, the values of faith, the role of religion in society - and casts them in an entirely new light. The real question, he argues, is how we should consider our urge to understand the world. Only then can we ask ourselves whether atheism or theism forms part of a coherent worldview. This new debate between atheism and theism forces us into an investigation of philosophy, science, history, ethics and aesthetics, and a desire for intellectual integrity and commitment to truth. It is far removed from the usual listing of the errors of theism. Not can atheism be equated with denialism. It holds real and practical implications for the place of religion and the obligations of atheists in our society.

An Intelligent Person's Guide to Modern Culture

Author: Roger Scruton
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 200

Book Description
Received by the British press with equal acclaim and indignation, this book sets out to define and defend high culture against the world of pop, corn, and popcorn. It shows just why culture matters in an age without faith, and gives an extended argument, drawing on philosophy, criticism, and anthropology, against the "post-modernist" world-view. Scruton offers a penetrating attack on deconstruction, on Foucault, on Nietzschean self-indulgence, and on the "culture of repudiation" which has infected the modern academy. But his book is not only negative. It is a celebration of the true heroes of modern culture and a call to the higher life. The American edition of this famous and notorious work has been revised to take account of the controversy which it has inspired, and contains new material specially directed to Americans.

An Intelligent Person's Guide to Catholicism

Author: Alban McCoy
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 9780826476722
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 162

Book Description
Addresses the key questions that non-Catholics—and even Catholics—have about Roman Catholicism.

I Drink Therefore I Am

Author: Roger Scruton
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1408194694
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 241

Book Description
Here Scruton explains the connection between good wine and serious thought with a heady mix of humour and philosophy. We are familiar with the medical opinion that a daily glass of wine is good for the health and also the rival opinion that any more than a glass or two will set us on the road to ruin. Whether or not good for the body, Scruton argues, wine, drunk in the right frame of mind, is definitely good for the soul. And there is no better accompaniment to wine than philosophy. By thinking with wine, you can learn not only to drink in thoughts but to think in draughts. This good-humoured book offers an antidote to the pretentious clap-trap that is written about wine today and a profound apology for the drink on which civilisation has been founded. In vino veritas.

Modern Culture

Author: Roger Scruton
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1408193507
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 215

Book Description
What do we mean by 'culture'? This word, purloined by journalists to denote every kind of collective habit, lies at the centre of contemporary debates about the past and future of society. In this thought-provoking book, Roger Scruton argues for the religious origin of culture in all its forms, and mounts a defence of the 'high culture' of our civilization against its radical and 'deconstructionist' critics. He offers a theory of pop culture, a panegyric to Baudelaire, a few reasons why Wagner is just as great as his critics fear him to be, and a raspberry to Cool Britannia. A must for all people who are fed up to their tightly clenched front teeth with Derrida, Foucault, Oasis and Richard Rogers.

Why Smart People Hurt

Author: Eric Maisel
Publisher: Mango Media Inc.
ISBN: 1609258851
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 235

Book Description
Make the most of your creative and intellectual gifts by overcoming the unique challenges they bring with this guide by the author of Natural Psychology. Many smart and creative people experience unique challenges as a result of their valuable gifts. These can range from anxiety and over-thinking to mania, depression, and despair. In Why Smart People Hurt, creativity coach Dr. Eric Maisel pinpoints these often-devastating challenges and offers solutions based on the groundbreaking principles and practices of natural psychology. Are you still searching for meaning after all these years? Many smart people struggle with reaching for or maintaining success because, after all of the work they put into attaining it, it still seems meaningless. In Why Smart people Hurt, Dr. Maisel will teach you how to stop searching for meaning and create it for yourself. In Why Smart People Hurt, you will find: · Evidence that you are not alone in your struggles · Strategies for coping with a brain that goes into overdrive at the drop of a hat · Questions that will help you create your own personal roadmap to a calm and meaningful life

Plants as Persons

Author: Matthew Hall
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438434308
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 251

Book Description
Plants are people too? No, but in this work of philosophical botany Matthew Hall challenges readers to reconsider the moral standing of plants, arguing that they are other-than-human persons. Plants constitute the bulk of our visible biomass, underpin all natural ecosystems, and make life on Earth possible. Yet plants are considered passive and insensitive beings rightly placed outside moral consideration. As the human assault on nature continues, more ethical behavior toward plants is needed. Hall surveys Western, Eastern, Pagan, and Indigenous thought as well as modern science for attitudes toward plants, noting the particular resources for plant personhood and those modes of thought which most exclude plants. The most hierarchical systems typically put plants at the bottom, but Hall finds much to support a more positive view of plants. Indeed, some indigenous animisms actually recognize plants as relational, intelligent beings who are the appropriate recipeints of care and respect. New scientific findings encourage this perspective, revealing that plants possess many of the capacities of sentience and mentality traditionally denied them.