Welcome to our book review site www.go-pdf.online!
You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
The Meaning of Life
Predrag Cicovacki invites us to reflect on what makes life meaningful. His book teaches us that theory and practice, ideas about life and ways of life should be inseparable. As talking about morality should not be detached from practicing virtue, discussing the meaning of life should not be separated from attempting to live as meaningfully as possible. Examining the lives of those we most admire reveals that living a meaningful life cannot ultimately be a mere quest for individual achievement or happiness. The self is neither the ultimate reality, nor should it be our ultimate concern. Our quest for meaning must instead be oriented toward something that is greater than our individual lives, and what we need to discern is what are, and are not, proper objects of such devotion. We cannot do this alone.
Dostoevsky and the Affirmation of Life
Dostoevsky's philosophy of life is unfolded in this searching analysis of his five greatest works: Notes from the Underground, Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Possessed, and The Brothers Karamazov. Predrag Cicovacki deals with a fundamental issue in Dostoevsky's opus neglected by all of his commentators: How can we affirm life and preserve a healthy optimism in the face of an increasingly troublesome reality? This work displays the vital significance of Dostoevsky's philosophy for understanding the human condition in the twenty-first century. The main task of this insightful effort is to reconstruct and examine Dostoevsky's "aesthetically" motivated affirmation of life, based on cycles ...
Between Truth and Illusion
In Between Truth and Illusion, Predrag Cicovacki carefully analyzes Kant's contribution to discussions of human being and finds that he was deeply involved in the systematic development of the modern anthropocentric orientation toward liberation and dominance of the subject. On the other hands, modernity's high ideal of universal scientific and moral progress turned out to be illusory and ill-conceived. Cicovacki focuses on Kant's important observations about the limitations of the modernist project and develops an interactive conception of truth from it. Truth, the author says, presupposes a dominance of neither subject nor object, but their dynamic and reciprocal interactive relation. The absence of proper interactions leads to various forms of self-projections or illusions.
Kant's Transcendental Deduction
Henry E. Allison presents an analytical and historical commentary on Kant s transcendental deduction of the pure concepts of the understanding in the Critique of Pure Reason. He argues that, rather than providing a new solution to an old problem (refuting a global skepticism regarding the objectivity of experience), it addresses a new problem (the role of a priori concepts or categories stemming from the nature of the understanding in grounding this objectivity), and he traces the line of thought that led Kant to the recognition of the significance of this problem in his 'pre-critical' period. Allison locates four decisive steps in this process: the recognition that sensibility and understan...
Anamorphosis
This book intends to show that we should re-think and re-evaluate our dogmatic commitment to a cognitivistic attitude. Our high regard for knowledge is due to the fact that we expect that it will help us satisfy not only our practical needs but also guide us toward a meaningful and fulfilled life. A careful examination of the nature and limits of knowledge reveals that both expectations cannot be satisfied. Following Kant, Cicovacki comes to the conclusion that, although our knowledge of reality seems to be reliable and true, at the same time it seems to be one-sided and very narrowly oriented. Our practical purposes seem to be served quite well, but it is dubious whether our knowledge helps...
The Restoration of Albert Schweitzer's Ethical Vision
In 1913, Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965) left his internationally renowned career as a theologian, philosopher, and organ player to open a hospital in the jungles of Africa. There he developed in theory and practice his ethics of reverence for life. When he published his most important philosophical work, The Philosophy of Civilization, few people were serious about treating animals with dignity and giving any consideration to environmental issues. Schweitzer's urge was heard but not fully appreciated. One hundred years later, we are in a better position to do it. Predrag Cicovacki's book is a call to restore Schweitzer's vision. After critically and systematically discussing the most important aspects of the ethics of reverence for life, Cicovacki argues that the restoration of Schweitzer does not mean the restoration of any particular doctrine. It means summoning enough courage to reverse the deadly course of our civilization. And it also means establishing a way of life that stimulates striving toward what is the best and highest in human beings.
Cosmic Miniatures and the Future Sense
Alexander Kluge’s revolutionary storytelling for the 21st-century pivots on the production of anti-realist hope under conditions of real catastrophe. Rather than relying on possibility alone, his experimental miniatures engender counterfactual horizons of futurity that are made incrementally accessible to lived experience through narrative form. Innovative close readings and theoretical reflection alike illuminate the dimensional quality of future time in Kluge’s radical prose, where off-worldly orientation and unnatural narrative together yield new sensory perspectives on associative networks, futurity, scale, and perspective itself. This study also affords new perspectives on the importance of Kluge’s creative writing for critical studies of German thought (including Kant, Marx, Benjamin, and especially Adorno), Holocaust memory, contemporary globalization, literary miniatures, and narrative studies of futurity as form. Cosmic Miniatures contributes an experiential but non-empirical sense of hope to future studies, a scholarly field of pressing public interest in endangered times.
Kant, Herder, and the Birth of Anthropology
If Kant had never made the "critical turn" of 1773, would he be worth more than a paragraph in the history of philosophy? Most scholars think not. But this text challenges that view by revealing a precritical Kant who was immensely more influential than the one philosophers think they know.
Potpourri of Jainism
"What is ahimsa or non-violence? Is it just the absence of violence or is it something more? Is ahimsa or non-violence even possible in today’s world? How does one interpret the meaning of war from the lens of ahimsa? Or how does one apply this concept to our own life? How can one learn respect and tolerance from the Jain doctrine of anekaanta (non-one-sidedness of views)? How and why should one apply the principle of aparigraha (non-attachment and non-possessiveness) in our life? Can a certain set of Jain values lead us to the path of inner peace? Can Jainism answer all these questions and some more? According to Dr. Sulekh Jain, the answer is yes. In the Potpourri of Jainism, Jain elucid...
Truth and Its Nature (if Any)
The question how to turn the principles implicitly governing the concept of truth into an explicit definition (or explication) of the concept hence coalesced with the question how to get a finite grip on the infinity of T-sentences. Tarski's famous and ingenious move was to introduce a new concept, satisfaction, which could be, on the one hand, recursively defined, and which, on the other hand, straightforwardly yielded an explication of truth. A surprising 'by-product' of Tarski's effort to bring truth under control was the breathtaking finding that truth is in a precisely defined sense ineffable, that no non trivial language can contain a truth-predicate which would be adequate for the ver...
