The Infinity Affliction

In this landmark volume, Blanchot sustains a dialogue with a number of thinkers whose contributions have marked turning points in the history of Western thought and have influenced virtually all the themes that inflect the contemporary literary and philosophical debate today. "Blanchot waits for us still to come, to be read and reread. . . I would say that never as much as today have I pictured him so far ahead of us." Jacques Derrida

Leaving a promising career in academic philosophy to embark on a career in film, American director Terrence Malick has created cinematic works of art that are also deeply philosophical. His contribution to philosophy through a half century of filmmaking has become the focus of increasing scholarly attention. Inviting the reader along a journey of reflections at the intersection of film, art, and philosophy, Life Above the Clouds brings together an international team of contributors to present the most current and definitive statement of the filmmaker's work. Accessibly written and exploring films such as Badlands, Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line, The New World, The Tree of Life, To the Wonder, Knight of Cups, Song to Song, and A Hidden Life, the nineteen essays herein will be of interest not only to scholars and students of philosophy, theology, film studies, and aesthetics, but also to anyone with a true love of film.

Aphoristic work on the meditational fundamentals of the yoga school of Indic philosophy.

Like the River Ganges flowing down from the Himalayas, the entire Buddhist tradition flows down to us from the teachings and deeds of the historical Buddha, who lived and taught in India during the fifth century B.C.E. To ensure that his legacy would survive the ravages of time, his direct disciples compiled records of the Buddha's teachings soon after his passing. In the Theravada Buddhist tradition, which prevails in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia, these records are regarded as the definitive "word of the Buddha." Preserved in Pali, an ancient Indian language closely related to the language that the Buddha spoke, this full compilation of texts is known as the Pali Canon. At the heart of the Buddha's teaching were the suttas (Sanskrit sutras), his discourses and dialogues. If we want to find out what the Buddha himself actually said, these are the most ancient sources available to us. The suttas were compiled into collections called "Nikayas," of which there are four, each organized according to a different principle. The Digha Nikaya consists of longer discourses; the Majjhima Nikaya of middle-length discourses; the Samyutta Nikaya of thematically connected discourses; and the Anguttara Nikaya of numerically patterned discourses. The present volume, which continues Wisdom's famous Teachings of the Buddha series, contains a full translation of the Anguttara Nikaya. The Anguttara arranges the Buddha's discourses in accordance with a numerical scheme intended to promote retention and easy comprehension. In an age when writing was still in its infancy, this proved to be the most effective way to ensure that the disciples could grasp and replicate the structure of a teaching.

This book covers the main aspects of Simone Weil’s thought, drawing on her life where it is relevant for understanding her ideas. It is the fruit of many years engagement with scholars and scholarship on Weil in America, France, and the United Kingdom. The philosophical bases of her social and political thought, of her analysis of the natural world, and of her spiritual journey, as found in Plato, Epictetus, and Kant are uncovered. The authors are especially concerned with controversial aspects of Weil’s life and thought: they offer an additional dimension to her understanding of the supernatural; they correct Rowan Williams’ misunderstanding of her account of preferential love; and argue against Thomas Nevin’s attempt to marginalize her as another example of Jewish self-hatred. The book also presents and assesses the new evidence for Weil’s baptism.

Often cited as perhaps the best-known Mahayana Buddhist sutra, the Heart Sutra has been chanted daily in Buddhist monasteries in Asia for more than a thousand years. This sutra, the “heart” of the larger Prajna Paramita (Perfection of Wisdom) Sutra, describes the experience of the liberation of the bodhisattva of compassion, Avalokiteśvara, through the insight gained from deep meditation into the fundamental emptiness of all phenomena. With commentary by the Tripitaka Master Hsuan Hua, one of the foremost Tripitaka and Chan masters of Chinese Buddhism in the United States. Translated by Ronald Epstein, PhD.

The Urkommunismus (the ideal place, the common place, the utopia, the pure place of origin) presides over every mysterious, therefore political, penal, social, financial, institutional, corporate doctrine, and dictates its canons, formulas, algorithms. It is the reference of every bureaucracy in its sacrificial, penal ceremonial. On the principle of nothingness, every regime unravels the fear of the word, to confiscate life. Ideally and really. Both “to the East” and “to the West”. In this book the analysis and reading are performed of the writings called “founding”, which mark our age, weighing down, in its models and its offices. The result is the text of the word, as well as the absolute novelty. And here we also discuss the letters of Aldo Moro, the letters of the Red Brigades, the writings of Paul VI, of “Clean Hands”, the European and Italian legislation, the writings of Cardinal Carlo Borromeo, of Giordano Bruno, of Eckhart, of Dante Alighieri, the Rigveda, the Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishad, the Avesta, the I Ching, Lao Tzu and Tao Te Ching, Lie Zi, Chuang-Tzu, the Bible, Buddha, the Qur’an, Antigone, Medea, the classics of tragedy, the classics of epics, of lyrics, of philosophy, of science, of mathematical logic, Confucius, Mencius, Ma gcig, the Sixth Dalai Lama, Mao, Khomeini, Gandhi, Narendra Modi, Xi Jinping.

'Philosophy of Exaggeration' addresses the philosophical relevance of exaggeration & discusses key thinkers including Adorno, Agamben, Arendt, Benjamin, Deleuze, Derrida, Freud, Kant, Hegel, Levinas & Wittgenstein.

This collection of nine essays focuses on those writings of Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) on literature and language that have a direct relevance to contemporary literary theory, notably his analyses of myth, violence, history, criticism, literature, and mass media. In an introductory essay, David S. Ferris discusses the problem of history, aura, and resistance in Benjamin’s later work and in its reception. Samuel Weber, in a reading of Benjamin’s most influential essay, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” analyzes the status of the image and technology in Benjamin’s own terms and in the shadow of Heidegger. Rodolphe Gasché devotes himself to an analysis of Benjamin’s dissertation on the German Romantics, providing a valuable guide to a major text that has yet to appear in English translation.

The Creature is an invitation to follow the mechanics between power and pain, which begets the creature. Creatures confront power in, and through, conjunctures of radical contingency. The casual use of power is an exercise in distraction. It is an abiding conundrum that those who endure affliction also exert it as a force over other living bodies in equal measure-not as acts of vengeance or bad faith, but through deeds of forgetful randomness. To ensure social indemnity and security, creatures exercise force over kindred embodiments through a process of collective mimicry. In the bargain, creatures begin to disfigure and distort each other. The line between mutual slaughter and mutual embrace begins to blur. Each transgresses its own soul. At other times, power is an opaque, magisterial and disdainful style of conveyance. It reveals itself out of nowhere. But the steadfast creature is as resilient as it is vulnerable. The more it endures, the greater its perdurance. Perduring creatures may sometimes gain a second sight, forged out of a sense of lyricality, love and abdication. But is abdication, or taking refuge in the wondrous, sufficient to release all creatures from the fatal loop of power and pain? Or will they have to slowly shed creaturely affliction by a rigorous process of decreation? Sifting through the writings of Giambattista Vico, Niccolò Machiavelli, Gabriel Tarde, Miguel de Unamuno, Jibanananda Das, Lev Shestov, Raymond Geuss, Jean Starobinski, Ernst Bloch, Simone Weil, Simon Critchley, Sarah Kane and others, this volume explores the creaturely predicament and its possibilities of freedom. The five chapters in Book I lay down fundamental questions for the creaturely condition: the question of mimicry, the relationship between taking initiative and being hounded, the bridge between senses and destitution, and the vehemence of radical contingency. Book II posits the question of skepticism, fideism and their connection to resilience and generosity in creatures. Book III is entirely devoted to various ways of conceiving the aesthetic: through the tragic, the epiphanic, the catastrophic and through militant material eruptions. Book II and III essentially delve into the sites of freedom that lurk within the condition of the creaturely. Book IV is constituted of a single chapter on the subject of decreation; it grapples with questions of attention, anonymity and abdication.

We are all captivated and puzzled by the infinite, in its many varied guises; by the endlessness of space and time; by the thought that between any two points in space, however close, there is always another; by the fact that numbers go on forever; and by the idea of an all-knowing, all-powerful God. In this acclaimed introduction to the infinite, A. W. Moore takes us on a journey back to early Greek thought about the infinite, from its inception to Aristotle. He then examines medieval and early modern conceptions of the infinite, including a brief history of the calculus, before turning to Kant and post-Kantian ideas. He also gives an account of Cantor’s remarkable discovery that some infinities are bigger than others. In the second part of the book, Moore develops his own views, drawing on technical advances in the mathematics of the infinite, including the celebrated theorems of Skolem and Gödel, and deriving inspiration from Wittgenstein. He concludes this part with a discussion of death and human finitude. For this third edition Moore has added a new part, ‘Infinity superseded’, which contains two new chapters refining his own ideas through a re-examination of the ideas of Spinoza, Hegel, and Nietzsche. This new part is heavily influenced by the work of Deleuze. Also new for the third edition are: a technical appendix on still unresolved questions about different infinite sizes; an expanded glossary; and updated references and further reading. The Infinite, Third Edition is ideal reading for anyone interested in an engaging and historically informed account of this fascinating topic, whether from a philosophical point of view, a mathematical point of view, or a religious point of view.

Simone Weil is one of the major religious writers of the twentieth century. Hers is a unique blend of spiritual experience, social concern, and philosophical theory. She had marvelous command of the Western philosophical tradition, yet she also had profound insights into Oriental philosophies. Since its publication in France, Veto's book has been considered by most scholars as the standard work on Simone Weil. Now this important book is available in English. It is the only available reconstruction of the entire philosophy of Simone Weil. It operates out of the perspective of the spiritual concerns of her maturity, yet it never fails to return to the issues and the positions of the early texts. It carries out the reconstruction according to some major philosophical themes, but gives its due share to the French thinkers' social and political preoccupations as well. The book is erudite, yet simple, written in a clear, concise and yet often eloquent language.

'You cannot get far in these essays without sensing yourself in the presence of a writer of immense intellectual power and fierce independence of mind.' - Janet Soskice, from the Introduction to the Routledge Classics edition Simone Weil (1909–1943) is one of the most brilliant and unorthodox religious and philosophical thinkers of the twentieth century. She was also a political activist who worked in the Renault car factory in France in the 1930s and fought briefly as an anarchist in the Spanish Civil War. Hailed by Albert Camus as 'the only great spirit of our times,' her work spans an astonishing variety of subjects, from ancient Greek philosophy and Christianity to oppression, political freedom and French national identity. Waiting for God is one of her most remarkable books, full of piercing spiritual and moral insight. The first part comprises letters she wrote in 1942 to Jean-Marie Perrin, a Dominican priest, and demonstrate the intense inner conflict Weil experienced as she wrestled with the demands of Christian belief and commitment. She then explores the 'just balance' of the world, arguing that we should regard God as providing two forms of guidance: our ability as human beings to think for ourselves; and our need for both physical and emotional 'matter.' She also argues for the concept of a 'sacred longing'; that humanity's search for beauty, both in the world and within each other, is driven by our underlying desire for a tangible god. Eloquent and inspiring, Waiting for God asks profound questions about the nature of faith, doubt and morality that continue to resonate today. This Routledge Classics edition includes a new Introduction by Janet Soskice and retains the Foreword to the 1979 edition by Malcolm Muggeridge.

After welcoming the congregation, the priest continued to announce the opening hymn, making no mention of why he had replaced Father Carmichael for the service. It raised the curiosity in Connie, especially as the rest of the congregation seemed relaxed and familiar with the priest addressing them. As the service continued, Connie found herself looking around the church to see if Father Carmichael had arrived. Peering through two pillars adjacent to their pew, her gaze fell upon a commemorative plaque set in the wall beyond. In bold script cut into the stone, Connie focused on the name of the church’s founder. She stared, stunned at the words “In memory of Father Carmichael,” followed by the dates of his life span several centuries earlier.

Two thousand years ago a man was sentenced to death for being the Son of God. Since then the events surrounding His last twenty-fours of life have become the focus of scrutiny by Christians and non-Christians alike. Are appropriate answers available to the many questions concerning these events? Is it possible to really know how much Jesus suffered during those final hours of life? Did Jesus really sweat blood in the Garden of Gethsemane? How severe was the Roman scourging? Why was crucifixion the chosen form of execution? Was His cause of death asphyxia, pulmonary embolism, heart failure, or is it still unknown? You may be surprised at the findings of this forensic investigation.

The only dictionary of its kind, this greatly expanded second edition lists objects, concepts, traits and situations ancient and modern and gives their appropriate symbols. A companion to Symbolism: A Comprehensive Dictionary (2012), this volume presents symbols and their referents in reverse association (but is not simply a reconfiguring of information). Examples: a symbol for "hell" is descending stairs; an attribute of Saint Benedict is a raven; joy after sorrow is signified by the gemstone amber. Ethnic, literary, artistic, religious, heraldic, numerological, folkloric, occult and psychological usages are included.