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Glimpsing life out of the corner of the eye, Raymond Barfield’s poems in Life in the Blind Spot seek that space where direct vision is elusive, but essential.
From its beginnings, philosophy's language, concepts and imaginative growth have been heavily influenced by poetry and poets. Drawing on the work of a wide range of thinkers throughout the history of Western philosophy, Raymond Barfield explores the pervasiveness of poetry's impact on philosophy and, conversely, how philosophy has sometimes resisted or denied poetry's influence. Although some thinkers, like Giambatista Vico and Nietzsche, praised the wisdom of poets, and saw poetry and philosophy as mutually beneficial pursuits, others resented, diminished or eliminated the importance of poetry in philosophy. Beginning with the famous passage in Plato's Republic in which Socrates exiles the poets from the city, this book traces the history of the ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry through the works of thinkers in the Western tradition ranging from Plato to the work of the contemporary thinker Mikhail Bakhtin.
How do humans explore beauty, virtue, love, justice, and goodness? This book argues that philosophical attention to our lives, shaped in part by our choices, is our instrument for investigating these parts of reality. Constructing a life is a philosophical act. Philosophical acts that are shaped by a life, and that shape a life, constitute philosophical style. Everyone has a philosophical style, which is fundamentally about the way we live in the world through our bodies, our reason, our imagination, and our virtue. It is about what we love and how we are loved. Beauty, suffering, and being in the world are placeholders for everything that makes up our lived experience. As we live our lives between beauty and suffering, we learn most about being in the world. The argument of the book moves from a discussion of philosophical style, through the three placeholders for human experience as they are affected by philosophy (beauty, suffering, and being in the world), arriving at a reworking of Pascal's wager about living in relationship to the presence or absence of God as a way of understanding the commitments that are our only way into the truth of our life.
How can a 19-year-old, mixed-race girl who grew up in a crack house and is now pregnant be so innocent? Yslea is full of contradictions, though, seeming both young and old, innocent and wise. Her spirit is surprising, given all the pain she has endured, and that's the counterpoint this story offers—while she sees pain and suffering all around her, Yslea overcomes in her own quiet way. What Yslea struggles with is expressing her thoughts. And she wonders if she will have something of substance to say to her baby. It's the baby growing inside her that begins to wake her up, that causes her to start thinking about things in a different way. Yslea drifts into the lives of four people who occupy three dilapidated row houses along the train tracks outside of Memphis: "The way their three little row houses sort of leaned in toward each other and the way the paint peeled and some of the windows were covered with cardboard, the row might as easily have been empty."
How do humans explore beauty, virtue, love, justice, and goodness? This book argues that philosophical attention to our lives, shaped in part by our choices, is our instrument for investigating these parts of reality. Constructing a life is a philosophical act. Philosophical acts that are shaped by a life, and that shape a life, constitute philosophical style. Everyone has a philosophical style, which is fundamentally about the way we live in the world through our bodies, our reason, our imagination, and our virtue. It is about what we love and how we are loved. Beauty, suffering, and being in the world are placeholders for everything that makes up our lived experience. As we live our lives between beauty and suffering, we learn most about being in the world. The argument of the book moves from a discussion of philosophical style, through the three placeholders for human experience as they are affected by philosophy (beauty, suffering, and being in the world), arriving at a reworking of Pascal's wager about living in relationship to the presence or absence of God as a way of understanding the commitments that are our only way into the truth of our life.
Spirituality and Religion Within the Culture of Medicine provides a comprehensive evaluation of the relationship between spirituality, religion, and medicine evaluating current empirical research and academic scholarship. In Part 1, the book examines the relationship of religion, spirituality, and the practice of medicine by assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the most recent empirical research of religion/spirituality within twelve distinct fields of medicine including pediatrics, psychiatry, internal medicine, surgery, palliative care, and medical ethics. Written by leading clinician researchers in their fields, contributors provide case examples and highlight best practices when eng...
Theories about the nature and function of philosophical imagination depend on our understanding of what kind of universe we inhabit. Raymond C. Barfield discusses conditions that would be necessary if the universe is meaningful as a whole, and then develops a theory of philosophical imagination in light of that starting place.
In this book Michael Di Fuccia examines the theological import of Owen Barfield's poetic philosophy. He argues that philosophies of immanence fail to account for creativity, as is evident in the false shuttling between modernity's active construal and postmodernity's passive construal of subjectivity. In both extremes subjectivity actually dissolves, divesting one of any creative integrity. Di Fuccia shows how in Barfield's scheme the creative subject appears instead to inhabit a middle or medial realm, which upholds one's creative integrity. It is in this way that Barfield's poetic philosophy gestures toward a theological vision of poiēsis proper, wherein creativity is envisaged as neither purely passive nor purely active, but middle. Creativity, thus, is not immanent but mediated, a participation in God's primordial poiēsis.
Fear has taken on an outsized role in our current cultural and political context. Manufactured threats are advanced with little to no evidence of danger, while real threats are exaggerated for self-interested gain. This steady diet of fear produces unhealthy moral lives, leading many Christians to focus more on the dangers we wish to avoid than the goods we wish to pursue. As a fearful people, we are tempted to make safety our highest good and to make virtues of suspicion, preemption, and accumulation. But this leaves the church ill-equipped to welcome the stranger, love the enemy, or give to those in need. This timely resource brings together cultural analysis and theological insight to explore a Christian response to the culture of fear. Laying out a path from fear to faithfulness, theologian Scott Bader-Saye explores practices that embody Jesus's call to place our trust in him, inviting Christian communities to take the risks of hospitality, peacemaking, and generosity. This book has been revised throughout, updated to connect with today's readers, and includes new discussion questions.