by Catherine Bell (2009)
"From handshakes and toasts to chant and genuflection, ritual pervades our social interactions and religious practices. Still, few of us could identify all of our daily and festal ritual behaviors, much less explain them to an outsider. Similarly, because of the variety of activities that qualify as ritual and their many contradictory yet, in many ways, equally legitimate interpretations, ritual seems to elude any systematic historical and comparative scrutiny. In this book, Catherine Bell offers a practical introduction to ritual practice and its study; she surveys the most influential theories of religion and ritual, the major categories of ritual activity, and the key debates that have shaped our understanding of ritualism. Bell refuses to nail down ritual with any one definition or understanding. Instead, her purpose is to reveal how definitions emerge and evolve and to help us become more familiar with the interplay of tradition, exigency, and self- expression that goes into constructing this complex social medium." --Publisher description.
Dean Kowalski
"There are books that debate math, science, and history; there are books that help you build walls or even pyramids; there are even books that discuss Neanderthals with tools and autotrophs that drool. This book discusses philosophy. But you don't need an IQ of 187 to enjoy it. I swear to cow! As you'll see, the philosophy is theoretical, but the fun is real"--
sous la direction de Jean-Philippe Pierron
Philosophes et psychiatres nourrissent des capillarités secrètes et des questionnements communs. Souvent, la méditation du philosophe se met à l'école de ces situations et de ces visages de l'humain malade qui habitent des masques que l'on croit inhabitables, "horla", et que lui rapporte le psychiatre. Sous le souci de biologiser la maladie mentale, le savoir et le savoir-faire de la psychiatrie font le pari de l'humanité et de la nécessité de la relation, demandant: où demeure-t-il celui dont on dit qu'il est un "demeuré"? Où est vraiment l'homme, lorsque nous découvrons combien nous sommes pressés de tracer très vite, trop vite, la frontière entre le délire et la réalité?
Arthur Koestler. --
Janus is both a summing up and continuation of Koestler's work over the past twenty-five years, since he turned from politics to the sciences of life- or more precisely, to the 'evolution, creativity and pathology of the human mind'. The insights gained on that long journey are here assembled in a coherent and comprehensive synthesis, and in the last part of the book, he offers us a tantalizing 'glance through the key-hole' from subatomic physics to metaphysics.
Juan Antonio Senent de Frutos
Aspectos biográficos de Ignacio Ellacuría - Planteamiento de los derechos humanos en Ellacuría - Sentido y horizonte de la filosofía de Ellacuría - Historización crítica de los derechos humanos.