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The English philosopher Herbert Spencer (1820 - 1903) was a colossus of the Victorian age. His works ranked alongside those of Darwin and Marx in the development of disciplines as wide ranging as sociology, anthropology, political theory, philosophy and psychology. In this acclaimed study of Spencer, the first for over thirty years and now available in paperback, Mark Francis provides an authoritative and meticulously researched intellectual biography of this remarkable man that dispels the plethora of misinformation surrounding Spencer and shines new light on the broader cultural history of the nineteenth century. In this major study of Spencer, the first for over thirty years, Mark Francis...
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The essays in Imagining the East explore how Theosophists during the formative period imagined the religions and cultures of the East. The authors examine the relationship of such representations to orientalism, the history of ideas, politics, and culture at large and discuss how these esoteric or theosophical representations mirrored conditions and values current in nineteenth-century mainstream intellectual culture. The essays also look at how the early Theosophical Society's representations of the East differed from mainstream 'orientalism' and how the Theosophical Society's mission in India was distinct from that of British colonialism and Christian missionaries.
The Language of Disenchantment explores how Protestant ideas about language inspired British colonial critiques of Hindu mythological, ritual, linguistic, and legal traditions.
Ephrem the Syrian (d. 373) has often been taken to represent an unhellenized Semitic form of Christianity in unbroken continuity with the tradition of Jesus and the apostles. This somewhat romanticized view of Ephrem disregards the fact that Syria had been subject to Greek influence since its conquest centuries earlier by Alexander the Great. Ephrem's own writings however frequently betray a familiarity with Greek philosophical ideas. This book first introduces Ephrem's intellectual context and his attitude towards learning. It then systematically analyzes parallels between Ephrem and Greek writers on the subjects of atomism, space, on corporeals, vision, and the four elements. This study thereby demonstrates that Ephrem draws not only on Semitic cultural traditions, but also on Greek philosophical thought.