You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
The ancient religious thinker Tertullian asked: “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?”, implying that faith and philosophy have nothing to say to each other. The history of this dialogue has shaped the intellectual dialogue from the very beginning right up to the present. In this book, Jerry H. Gill has traced the dynamics of this dialogue and in the conclusion he has offered his own answer to the questions it raises.
How is it that chimpanzees can learn to "speak" at a higher level than some so-called wolf children? What happened that day in the pumphouse, when Helen Keller suddenly grasped the meaning of words? And picture this: a father and mother who shun the advice of professionals, who doggedly force their way into the closed world of their autistic son, and who reverse his grim prognosis, revealing him to be gifted. How to explain? In this book, a philosopher combines these famous cases with a lifetime of study to examine the threshold of language--that point "between speech and not quite speech." He provides fascinating accounts of the deaf and blind Helen Keller, of chimpanzees like Washoe, and o...
This work offers a fresh angle of interpretation for the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein.It explores his use of metaphor, as well the implications of this use for new insights into his view of language in particular and philosophy in general.
Words, Deeds, Bodies by Jerry H. Gill concentrates on the interrelationships between speech, accomplishing tasks, and human embodiment. Ludwig Wittgenstein, J. L. Austin, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Michael Polanyi have all highlighted these relationships. This book examines the, as yet, unexplored connections between these authors’ philosophies of language. It focuses on the relationships between their respective key ideas: Wittgenstein’s notion of “language game,” Austin’s concept of “performative utterances,” Merleau-Ponty’s idea of “slackening the threads,” and Polanyi's understanding of “tacit knowing,” noting the similarities and differences between and amongst them.
The 7th edition of ENDURING QUESTIONS continues to explore and examine virtually all of the classical and contemporary questions posed by the major philosophers of western civilization. From the philosophical traditions of ancient Greece to the present day, the ways of understanding our own knowledge, the nature of reality, the basis of morality, and social ideals are presented in the philosophers "own writings", a panoramic collection for introductory students. This text has endured since Melvin Rader originated it in 1956, and it continues to stand the test of time as a valuable core book of readings for introductory courses in philosophy.
This book explores the philosophical/religious thought of Soren Kierkegaard, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Nikos Kazantzakis in relation to the concept of transcendence. Each of these thinkers has made a strong impact on Western religious and philosophical thought, but each from a nearly completely different angle as well as from a different national background. This comparative study therefore crosses both national and perspectival boundaries. Each of the three thinkers struggled with the notion of transcendence but in uniquely distinct fashion. The conclusion offers yet a third model, the author’s, for understanding transcendence focusing on the concept of “mediation”.
In this excellent survey of Native American worldviews, philosopher of religion Jerry H. Gill emphasizes the value of tracing the overarching themes and broad contours of Native American belief systems. He presents an integrated view to serve as an introduction to ways of life and perspectives on the world far different from those of the dominant Euro-American culture. Drawing on the scholarship of anthropologists and specialists in American Indian Studies, Gill brings together much original research in broad, accessible chapters. He explores Native American origin stories, the special connotations given to spatial concepts such as the cardinal directions and the circle, the influence of the...
None
This is a winning and accessible critique of postmodernist philosophy. Postmodernism is a term used to describe a contemporary school of philosophy that takes a highly critical stance toward the conceptual underpinnings of the modern worldview. In this critical assessment of postmodernism, philosopher Jerry Gill argues that, however insightful the critiques of the postmodernists, they did little or nothing to offer constructive approaches to overcoming the impasse their criticism of modernism created. Instead, he turns to an earlier generation of 20th century philosophers - Alfred Whitehead, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Michael Polanyi - who anticipated later postmodern trends but offered alternative approaches to the dilemmas of modernism regarding the nature of reality, knowledge, and language
The Tacit Mode exposes and explores the central insights in Michael Polanyi's major works. It focuses on his epistemological insights concerning tacit knowing, and explores their ramifications for philosophy, science, art, language, political theory, and religion. The notion of tacit knowledge reconstructs the modern concept of objectivity while avoiding the self-stultifying effects of "deconstructivist" postmodernism and puts Polanyi on the cutting edge of contemporary philosophy.