All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age

All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age
ISBN-10
1439101701
ISBN-13
9781439101704
Category
Religion
Pages
272
Language
English
Published
2011-01-04
Publisher
Simon and Schuster
Authors
Hubert Dreyfus, Sean Dorrance Kelly

Description

In unrelenting flow of choices confronts us at nearly every moment of our lives, and yet our culture offers us no clear way to choose. This predicament seems inevitable, but in fact it’s quite new. In medieval Europe, God’s calling was a grounding force. In ancient Greece, a whole pantheon of shining gods stood ready to draw an appropriate action out of you. Like an athlete in “the zone,” you were called to a harmonious attunement with the world, so absorbed in it that you couldn’t make a “wrong” choice. If our culture no longer takes for granted a belief in God, can we nevertheless get in touch with the Homeric moods of wonder and gratitude, and be guided by the meanings they reveal? All Things Shining says we can. Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly illuminate some of the greatest works of the West to reveal how we have lost our passionate engagement with and responsiveness to the world. Their journey takes us from the wonder and openness of Homer’s polytheism to the monotheism of Dante; from the autonomy of Kant to the multiple worlds of Melville; and, finally, to the spiritual difficulties evoked by modern authors such as David Foster Wallace and Elizabeth Gilbert. Dreyfus, a philosopher at the University of California, Berkeley, for forty years, is an original thinker who finds in the classic texts of our culture a new relevance for people’s everyday lives. His lively, thought-provoking lectures have earned him a podcast audience that often reaches the iTunesU Top 40. Kelly, chair of the philosophy department at Harvard University, is an eloquent new voice whose sensitivity to the sadness of the culture—and to what remains of the wonder and gratitude that could chase it away—captures a generation adrift. Re-envisioning modern spiritual life through their examination of literature, philosophy, and religious testimony, Dreyfus and Kelly unearth ancient sources of meaning, and teach us how to rediscover the sacred, shining things that surround us every day. This book will change the way we understand our culture, our history, our sacred practices, and ourselves. It offers a new—and very old—way to celebrate and be grateful for our existence in the modern world.

Get the book

Amazon.com
Amazon.com
Search the book
eBay.com
eBay.com
Search the book

Other editions

Similar books

  • All Things Change: Nature's rhythms, from sprouting seeds to shining stars
    All Things Change: Nature's rhythms, from sprouting seeds to shining stars
    By Anna Claybourne

    All Things Change is a lyrical and beautifully illustrated book looking at the many different processes of change in the natural world, covering geology, ecology, biology and more.

  • The Shining Girls
    The Shining Girls
    By Lauren Beukes

    The jaw-dropping, page-turning, critically-acclaimed book of the year: a serial-killer thriller unlike any other from the award-winning Lauren Beukes. ‘GONE GIRL has not exactly gone. But THE SHINING GIRLS have...

  • Mind Over Machine
    Mind Over Machine
    By Hubert Dreyfus, Stuart E. Dreyfus

    As such, they will never be replicated by computers. This is the challenging notion of Hubert Dreyfus, Ph. D., archcritic of the artificial intelligence establishment.

  • Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life
    Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life
    By Winifred Gallagher

    The behavioral scientist author of Just the Way You Are presents a provocative argument that the quality of one's life is directly related to the focus of one's attention, drawing on the latest findings in neuroscience and psychology to ...

  • River's End: The Inn at Shining Water Series #3
    River's End: The Inn at Shining Water Series #3
    By Melody Carlson

    When Anna Larson's granddaughter Sarah finds her independence, she travels away from all that is familiar, but when she returns to Shining Waters, three generations of family heartbreak and disappointments converge and Sarah finds God right ...

  • The Shining Company
    The Shining Company
    By Rosemary Sutcliff

    ' Many years after King Arthur defeated the Saxons, the tribes of Britain are again threatened by invaders. Prosper and his loyal bondsman, Conn, answer the call of King Mynydogg to join a highly skilled army - the Shining Company.

  • The Shining
    The Shining
    By Stephen King

    #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Before Doctor Sleep, there was The Shining, a classic of modern American horror from the undisputed master, Stephen King.

  • Shining the Light V: Humanity Is Going to Make It!
    Shining the Light V: Humanity Is Going to Make It!
    By Robert Shapiro, Arthur Fanning

    SSG to Fade Away and Join the Legitimate System to Make More Money The sinister secret government is still going to be in ... And banks. I don't want to single out banks — legitimate corporations, and I'm not going to say which ones.

  • I Am Every Good Thing
    I Am Every Good Thing
    By Derrick Barnes

    Illustrations and easy-to-read text pay homage to the strength, character, and worth of a child.

  • The Mother of all Things: Book One
    The Mother of all Things: Book One
    By Gabriel Blake

    It was supposed to be a new beginning for Elaine Davis.