Coleridge's progress to Christianity

Sample

William A. Ulmer

"Recent scholarship on the British Romantic poet William Wordsworth usually depicts him as a secular humanist during the years of his creative ascendancy. In The Christian Wordsworth, 1798-1805, William A. Ulmer challenges this consensus by arguing that Wordsworth never abandoned his faith in a supernatural Deity and that the poet's theism included important Christian sympathies as early as 1798. By tracing the changes in Wordsworth's religious beliefs - from the early secular period to the later Anglican period - Ulmer reconstructs the strategic indirections by which the poet's faith shapes his major poems. In readings of The Ruined Cottage, the Pedlar narrative, "Tintern Abbey," the Prospectus, the Ode, The Prelude, and other texts, Ulmer presents a poet increasingly determined to stage the prophetic revelations of his poems against carefully established Christian backgrounds. Through this revisionary traditionalism, Wordsworth attempts to preserve England's Christian heritage by adapting it to modern needs. Revisionary in its own right, Ulmer's book provides an innovative perspective on Romantic natural supernaturalism and on William Wordsworth's religious poetics and intellectual development."--BOOK JACKET.

Sample

Jenny Davidson

"In Hypocrisy and the Politics of Politeness, Jenny Davidson considers the arguments that define hypocrisy as a moral and political virtue in its own right. She shows that these were arguments that thrived in the medium of eighteenth-century Britain's culture of politeness. In the debate about the balance between truthfulness and politeness, Davidson argues that eighteenth-century writers from Locke to Austen come down firmly on the side of politeness. This is the case even when it is associated with dissimulation or hypocrisy. These writers argue that the open profession of vice is far more dangerous for society than even the most glaring discrepancies between what people say in public and what they do in private. This book explores what happens when controversial arguments in favor of hypocrisy enter the mainstream, making it increasingly hard to tell the difference between hypocrisy and more obviously attractive qualities like modesty, self-control and tact."--Jacket.

Sample

Bernard Hamon

A travers cet essai critique, Bernard Hamon s'appuie sur les textes de George Sand pour montrer que sa pensée religieuse ne peut entrer "dans le moule de religions existantes". Spiritualiste et humaniste, elle est "empreinte d'une religiosité cosmique en dehors de toute confession". "Je suis toujours croyante, tout à fait croyante en Dieu. La vie éternelle. Le mal un jour vaincu par la science. La science éclairée par l'amour. Mais les symboles, les figures, les dieux humains ? Bonjour ! J'ai dépassé tout cela. Je suis entrée dans l'univers, et voilà." Extrait de Journal intime.

Sample

Christopher Belshaw

The ever-present possibility of death forces upon us the question of life's meaning and for this reason death has been a central concern of philosophers throughout history. From Socrates to Heidegger, philosophers have grappled with the nature and significance of death. In "Annihilation", Christopher Belshaw explores two central questions at the heart of philosophy's engagement with death: what is death; and is it bad that we die? Belshaw begins by distinguishing between literal and metaphorical uses of the term and offers a unified and biological account of death, denying that death brings about non-existence. How our death relates to the death of the brain is explored in detail. Belshaw considers the common-sense view that death is often bad for us by examining the circumstances that might make it bad as well as the grounds for thinking that one death can be worse than another. In addition, Belshaw explores whether we can be harmed after we die and before we were born. The final chapters explore whether we should prevent more deaths and whether, via cryonics, brain transplants, data storage, we might cheat death. Throughout Belshaw shows how questions of personhood and life's value are bound up with our views on the sense and significance of death. "Annihilation's" in-depth analysis and insightful exposition will be welcomed not only by philosophers working on the metaphysics of death but also by students and scholars alike looking for a foundation for discussions of the ethics of abortion, euthanasia, life-support and suicide.