Giordano Bruno : an introduction /
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Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) was a philosopher in his own right. However, he was famous through the centuries due to his execution as a heretic. His pronouncements against teachings of the Catholic Church, his defence of the cosmology of Nicholas Copernicus, and his provocative personality, all this made him a paradigmatic figure of modernity. Bruno's way of philosophizing is not looking for outright solutions but rather for the depth of the problems; he knows his predecessors and their strategies as well as their weaknesses, which he exposes satirically. This introduction helps to identify the original thought of Bruno who proudly said about himself: "Philosophy is my profession!" His major achievements concern the creativity of the human mind studied through the theory of memory, the infinity of the world, and the discovery of atomism for modernity. He never held a permanent office within or without the academic world. Therefore, the way of thinking of this "Knight Errant of Philosophy" will be presented along the stations of his journey through Western Europe.
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1 online resource (viii, 128 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789401208291 :
0929-8436 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Karl Jaspers : From Selfhood to Being.
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This book traces the work of German philosopher Karl Jaspers (1883-1969) from his origins as a young psychiatrist up to his maturity as an existentialist philosopher. The critique of Jaspers's thought follows his attempts to grant meaning to the human search for self-understanding. It reveals the difficulties and frustrations entailed in this search. The book reveals to the reader Jaspers's handling of these difficulties through constituting a philosophical relation toward the Being existing beyond the individual: other people, the world, and transcendence. In this book, the author conducts an ongoing dialog with existing research into Jaspers's work, and proposes her own new reading. As well as critiquing the existing interpretations, the author uncovers the challenges Jaspers's character has presented the readers. Unlike most scholars, who generally ignored Jaspers's early writings, dealing with psychiatry and psychology, this book suggests a philosophical reading of these writings. This exposes the unity of the world from which Jaspers created, first as a psychiatrist and later as a philosopher. This reading shows Jaspers's work as an ambitious attempt to formulate an original perception of the two basic themes that have interested philosophy and human thought throughout the ages: Selfhood and Being.
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1 online resource (349 pages) :
9789401208062 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
From the delta to the cataract : studies dedicated to Mohamed el-Bialy /
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This volume in honour of Mohamed el-Bialy offers 22 contributions by his friends and colleagues in appreciation for many years of true cooperation during his long career in Egyptian Archaeology. The articles deal with a wide range of topics and cover a time span from prehistory to the Byzantine Era. Unpublished objects and texts as well as results of most recent field research are presented by leading scholars in archaeology, Egyptology, architectural history and religious studies. The focus on the regions of Aswan and Ancient Thebes reflects the particular research interests of the honoree and his constant efforts to protect the archaeological heritage at these two centers of Ancient Egyptian civilization.
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1 online resource (xviii, 294 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004293458 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Friedrich Max Müller, A Life Devoted to the Humanities.
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Friedrich Max Müller was one of the great scholars of the nineteenth century. His studies on the history and nature of religion were of great interest to both scholarly and more popular circles, and he was for a long time an influential figure in the cultural life of Victorian Britain. Therefore, a new study of his life and especially of his works needs no apology. The book gives a survey of Müller's life and his main ideas on language, mythology, religion, Christianity and the missions, as well as his philosophy of religion. The last chapter deals with the legacy of Müller's ideas in the twentieth century. The book is particularly useful for historians of religion interested in the origin of the science of religion and for historians specialized in the history of ideas.
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1 online resource. :
9789004379176
Simon Dubnow's "new Judaism" : diaspora, nationalism and the world history of the Jews /
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In this volume Robert Seltzer examines Simon Dubnow (1860-1941) as the most eminent East European Jewish historian of his day and a spokesperson for his people, setting out to define their identity in the future based on his understanding of their past. Rejecting Zionism and Jewish socialism espoused by contemporaries, he argued in "Letter on Old and New Judaism" that the Jews of the diaspora constituted a distinctive nationality deserving cultural autonomy in the liberal multi-national state he hoped would emerge in Russia. Seltzer traces the young Dubnow's personal encounter with European intellectual currents that led him from the traditional shtetl world to a non-religious conception of Jewishness that resonated beyond Tsarist Russia.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004260672 :
1873-9008 ;
Egyptology from the First World War to the Third Reich : ideology, scholarship, and individual biographies /
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Only recently has Egyptology begun to critically examine its history in the first half of the 20th century. This book presents major contributions that analyze the interplay of personal biographies and political history, ideologies and academic scholarship between the First World War and the Third Reich. Peter Raulwing and Thomas Gertzen study the political activism of Friedrich Wilhelm Freiherr von Bissing, professor of Egyptology at the University of Munich and art collector, during and after the First World War. Thomas Schneider's contribution is the first comprehensive treatment of the biographies of German and Austrian Egyptologists in the time of National Socialism and their careers after 1945, with remarks on the relationship between Egyptological scholarship and Nazi ideology. Lindsay Ambridge analyzes the scholarship of James Henry Breasted, the patron of North American Egyptology, in the context of racial ideologies of the early 20th century. A concluding chapter by Peter Raulwing, added after the death of Manfred Mayrhofer, patron of the study of Indo-Aryans in the Ancient Near East, reflects on the 20th century ideological and academic interest in the question of Indo-Aryans in the Ancient Near East. In the introductory chapter, Edmund Meltzer places these studies and their significance in the wider context of Egyptological and historiographical scholarship. \'...this book makes a significant contribution to exploring a dark chapter in Egyptology's history as a discipline and an important step in understanding the effect that period had on the academic community.\' Edward Mushett Cole, University of Birmingham
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1 online resource (296 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004243309 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Dreams, Sufism and Sainthood, The Visionary Career of Muhammad al-Zawâwî.
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Based on Muhammad al-Zawâwî's extraordinary diary of 109 dream conversations with the Prophet Muhammad, this study provides a rare, intimate view of 15th-century North African Muslim life. The study reconstructs Zawâwî's lifestory over a critical ten-year period and examines his career as a sufi in the historical context of North Africa and Mamluk Cairo. Psychological aspects of Zawâwî's religious experience are thoroughly explored. The concluding chapter provides an introduction to the role of dreams and visions in medieval Islam. Particular attention is paid to the way Zawâwî and his successors used their visions to legitimate claims to being awliya' , or living saints.
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1 online resource. :
9789004378926
Dilemmas of attachment : identity and belonging among Palestinian Christians /
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This book offers an ethnographic account of contemporary Christian Palestinian lives in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Through individual life stories, Bård Kårtveit shows how Christians in the District of Bethlehem strive to live meaningful lives. Lives which are shaped by Christian-Muslim relations within the national community, the impact of Israeli presence in the Palestinian Territories, migration and homeland-diaspora relationships, and which are heavily influenced by changes in their local community and traditional family structures. By situating these stories in the changing political contexts of Palestine, from late Ottoman to Israeli/Palestinian Authority rule, the author engages with these general processes of patriarchal resistance to social change; the role of minorities in nation-building processes; the impact of Western interventions in the region; the rise of political Islam; and the impact of emigration in the Arab World.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004276390 :
1385-3376 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
ʿArafāt al-ʿāshiqīn wa-ʿaraṣāt al-ʿārifīn. Volume 5, ʿAyn-Fāʾ /
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In Persian literature, tadhkira ('note', 'memorandum') works are for the most part collections of biographies of poets, combined with selections from their writings. The earliest such work is Dawlatshāh Samarqandī's Tadhkirat al-shuʿarāʾ (completed in 892/1487), which set a standard for posterity. The tadhkira genre was especially popular in the 10th/16th century and following. The present work by Taqī al-Dīn Awḥadī (alive in 1042/1632-33) is a good example of this. Born in Isfahan in 973/1565, as a young man his poetical talent was commended by, among others, the poet ʿUrfī Shīrāzī (d. 999/1591). After some time in the entourage of Shāh ʿAbbās I and a six-year stay in Iraq, he left Persia to try his luck at one of the courts in India. The present work, completed in 1024/1615, was written for a high official at the court of Jahāngīr. It contains about 3500 entries on Persian poets from the earliest times until his own day.
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1 online resource. :
9789004405547
9789648700848
The emergence of early Sufi piety and Sunni scholasticism : ʻAbdallah born al-Mubarak and the formation of Sunni identity in the second Islamic century /
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In the figure of ʿAbdallāh born al-Mubārak (118-181/736-797), we find a paragon of the fields of ḥadīth , zuhd , and jihād , as attested to by the large number of references to him in the classical Islamic texts. His superior rank as a ḥadīth transmitter earned him the title "commander of the faithful" in ḥadīth. He contributed to Islamic law at its early phases of development, practiced jihād, composed poetry, and participated in various theological discussions. In addition, Ibn al-Mubārak was a pioneer in writing on piety and was later regarded by many mystics as one of the earliest figures of Sufism. Ibn al-Mubārak's position during the formative period of Islamic thought illustrates the unique evolution of zuhd, ḥadīth, and jihād; these form a junction in the biography of Ibn al-Mubārak in a way that distinctively illuminates the second/eighth-century dynamics of nascent Sunnī identity. Furthermore, Ibn al-Mubārak's status as a fighter and pious figure of the Late Antique period reveals a great deal about the complex relationship between the early Muslim community and the religiously diverse setting which it inhabited. This critical and comprehensive monograph of ʿAbdallāh born al-Mubārak situates him within the larger context of the social and religious milieu of Late Antiquity. It explores the formation of Sunnī identity in the second Islamic century and demonstrates the way in which it manifested itself through networks of pious scholars who defined, preserved, and passed on what they understood to be normative Islamic practice and beliefs from one generation of Muslim intellectuals to another.
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Edited version of the author's thesis (Ph. D.--University of Chicago, 2013) under the title: 'Abd Allah born al-Mubarak between hadith, jihad, and zuhd : an expression of early Sunni identity in the formative period. :
1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004314481 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.