Meaning of Life: Perspectives from the World’s Great Intellectual Traditions
What is the meaning of life? It's a question every thoughtful person has pondered at one time or another. Indeed, it may be the biggest question of all. Most of us have asked ourselves this question at some time, or posed it to somebody we respect. It is at once a profound and abstract question, and a deeply personal one. We want to understand the world in which we live, but we also want to understand how to make our own lives as meaningful as possible; to know not only why we're living, but that we're doing it with intention, purpose, and ethical commitment.
The Rise and Fall of Soul and Self - An Intellectual History of Personal Identity
This book traces the development of theories of the self and personal identity from the ancient Greeks to the present day. From Plato and Aristotle to Freud and Foucault, Raymond Martin and John Barresi explore the works of a wide range of thinkers and reveal the larger intellectual trends, controversies, and ideas that have revolutionized the way we think about ourselves.The authors open with ancient Greece, where the ideas of Plato, Aristotle, and the materialistic atomists laid the groundwork for future theories. They then discuss the ideas of the church fathers and medieval and Renaissance philosophers, including St. Paul, Philo, Augustine, Aquinas, and Montaigne.
The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation, 2nd ed.
It is widely recognized that the sixteenth-century Reformation remains one of the most fascinating and exciting areas of scholarship. A central and important question, raised by intensive modern research on the Renaissance and late medieval scholasticism, concerns the intellectual origins of the Reformation.
Medieval and Renaissance Humanism - Rhetoric, Representation, and Reform
This volume discusses humanist aspects of medieval and Renaissance intellectual life and thought and of their appropriation by modern history and literature. It charts the humanist representations of the scholarly enterprise, the self-representation of the intellectual, the representation of individuality in humanist literature, as well as the problem field of Renaissance humanism as an ideological programme of educational, moral, and political reform. The volume is particularly useful for medievalists and Renaissance scholars, as well as for historians specialised in the history of medieval and Renaissance art, medicine music and education.
"Intellectual property" - patents and copyrights - have become controversial. We witness teenagers being sued for "pirating" music - and we observe AIDS patients in Africa dying due to lack of ability to pay for drugs that are high priced to satisfy patent holders. Are patents and copyrights essential to thriving creation and innovation - do we need them so that we all may enjoy fine music and good health? Across time and space the resounding answer is: No. So-called intellectual property is in fact an "intellectual monopoly" that hinders rather than helps the competitive free market regime that has delivered wealth and innovation to our doorsteps.
