Showing posts with label Wisdom. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wisdom. Show all posts

Friday, September 25, 2015

Seeing the World and Knowing God: Hebrew Wisdom and Christian Doctrine in a Late-Modern Context




Seeing the World and Knowing God: Hebrew Wisdom and Christian Doctrine in a Late-Modern Context by Paul S. Fiddes


English | 2013 | ISBN: 0199644101, 0198709757 | 448 pages | PDF | 2,2 MB




This book aims to create a Christian theology of wisdom for the present day, in discussion with two sets of conversation-partners. The first are writers of the "wisdom literature" in ancient Israel and the Jewish community in Alexandria. Here, special attention is given to the biblical books of Proverbs, Job and Ecclesiastes. The second conversation-partners are philosophers and thinkers of the late-modern age, among them Jacques Derrida, Emmanuel Levinas, Julia Kristeva, Paul Ricoeur and Hannah Arendt. In the late-modern period there has been a reaction against an inherited conception of the conscious and rational self as mastering and even subjugating the world around, and there has been an attempt to overcome the consequent split between the subject and objects of observation.




Paul S. Fiddes enters into dialogue with these late-modern concerns about the relation between the self and the world, proposing that the wisdom which is indicated by the ancient Hebraic concept of ḥokmah integrates a "practical wisdom" of handling daily experience with the kind of wisdom which is "attunement" to the world and ultimately to God as creator and sustainer of all. Fiddes brings detailed exegesis of texts from the ancient wisdom literature into interaction with an account of the subject in late-modern thought, in order to form a theology in which seeing the world is knowing a God whose transcendent reality is always immanent in the signs and bodies of the world. He thus argues that participation in a triune, relational God shapes a wisdom that addresses problems of a dominating self, and opens the human person to others.







Note: My nickname – interes








Samurai Wisdom: Lessons from Japan"s Warrior Culture




Samurai Wisdom: Lessons from Japan"s Warrior Culture (Five Classic Texts on Bushido) by Thomas Cleary


2009 | ISBN: 0804840083, 4805312939 | English | 256 pages | PDF+EPUB | 1 + 1.4 MB




The ancient warrior culture of Japan produced a sophisticated martial philosophy that we know today as Bushido—the Way of the Warrior. In Samurai Wisdom, author Thomas Clearly provides five important new translations of major Japanese works on Bushido.




The writings of the scholar Yamaga Soko and his disciples are among the clearest expositions we have of the core ideals and philosophy underlying the Samurai"s disciplined way of life and outlook. Together they provide an in-depth, practical guide to character building and conduct according to the precepts of Bushido—a code for professional warriors that retains as much relevance in today"s world as it had when these works were written 400 years ago.




Yamaga"s writings inspired the transformation of the Samurai from a feudal class of warriors under the command of the Shogun to a group of powerful individuals with great intellectual, political and moral leadership and influence. The works translated in Samurai Wisdom for the very first time are as timeless and important today as the works of Sun Tzu, Musashi and Clausewitz.




The five Japanese works on Bushido translated in Samurai Wisdom are:


-The Way of the Knight by Yamaga Soko


-The Warrior"s Rule by Tsugaru Kodo-shi


-Essentials of Military Matters compiled by Yamaga Takatsune


-The Education of Warriors by Yamaga Soko


-Primer of Martial Education by Yamaga Soko








Saturday, September 19, 2015

Israel in Comparative Perspective: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom (Suny Series in Israeli Studies)




Israel in Comparative Perspective: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom (Suny Series in Israeli Studies) by Michael N. Barnett


English | Feb. 1996 | ISBN: 0791428311 | 296 Pages | PDF | 5.03 MB




Because Israel is unique in many dimensions, many social scientists consider it a historical peculiarity. Neither East nor West, developed nor undeveloped, capitalist nor socialist, Third World nor First World, Israel has little in common with other countries and their historical experiences. This book of original essays challenges the image of Israeli uniqueness and the status of the Israeli case and at the same time corrects some common misperceptions about the comparative method in general and case selection in particular. At the same time, it compares Israeli and Arab experiences and addresses critical issues in Middle Eastern studies. To challenge the image of Israeli uniqueness, the authors situate Israel"s history in comparative context; employ macrohistorical concepts both to reexamine the Israeli case and to build bridges between Israel and other historical experiences; and use the Israeli case to reconsider existing social science theories. [Articles by Michael Barnett, Yehezkal Dror, Rebecca Kook, Ian Lustick, Joel Migdal, Gershon Shafir, Gabriel Sheffer, Shibley Telhami, and Mark Tessler and Ina Warriner] Israel in Comparative Perspective demonstrates how our understanding of the region can be enriched by using models and theories developed in other regions to reexamine Israeli history.