Under the Adorned Dome, Four Essays on the Arts of Iran and India : Ehsan Yarshater Lecture Series /
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These essays are the revised and updated version of four lectures given in the Yarshater Lecture Series, at SOAS in London in 2013. They concern some aspects of the arts from pre-modern Iran and India, namely, the "making of" of Persian illustrated manuscripts, the iconography of Kashan wares, the use and re-use of luster tiles in Ilkhanid Iran, and the glazed tiles made in three Indian sultanates (Delhi, Bengal and Malwa). These four topics share concepts of influence and impact, although inflected on different modes. The productions they embody represent many poles of influence, even if working on different scales, from the extensive diffusion of products, techniques, and systems to almost isolated productions.
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1 online resource (270 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004549722
Machiavelli's Art of Politics.
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In Machiavelli's Art of Politics Alejandro Bárcenas offers a reexamination of Niccolò Machiavelli's political thought in order to propose a concise and historically accurate portrayal of his ideas and intellectual context. This study provides a nuanced view of the complexities of Machiavelli's thought by analyzing his classical background, taking into particular consideration the influence of Xenophon, and his view of the ideal ruler as someone who creates the conditions for a flourishing human life. In addition, Bárcenas explains why Machiavelli defends a republican political order that encourages citizens to live according to their own laws while serving a common good and revises his legacy through the writings of Leo Strauss, Eric Voegelin and Maurizio Viroli.
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Description based upon print version of record. :
1 online resource (173 pages) :
9789004298026 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
A philosophy of the possible : modalities in thought and culture /
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In this book, Mikhail Epstein offers a systematic theory of modalities (the actual, possible, and necessary), as applied to the discourse of philosophy in its post-Kantian and especially post-Derridean perspectives. He relies on his own experience of living in the USSR and the US, dominated respectively by imperative and possibilist modalities. Possibilism assumes that a thing or event acquires meaning only in the context of its multiple possibilities, inviting counterfactual and conditional modes of description. The author focuses on the creative potentials of possibilistic thinking and its heuristic value. The book demonstrates the range of modal approaches to society, culture, ethics, and language, and outlines potentiology as a new philosophical discipline interacting with ontology and epistemology.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004398344 :
0929-8436 ;
The Egyptian priests of the Graeco-Roman period : an analysis on the basis of the Egyptian and Graeco-Roman literary and paraliterary sources /
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Throughout Egyptian history, high-ranking Egyptian priests were the scholars responsible for the creation of the very material that constituted the core of Egyptian intellectual culture. During the first millennium BCE, and particularly in the Graeco-Roman period (late fourth century BCE?fourth century CE), they were the social group in charge of mediating and negotiating the terms of the relationship between traditional Egyptian culture and the new foreign rulers of the country. As such, they are fundamental figures for our understanding of the greater Mediterranean and Near Eastern world of the time. 0Marina Escolano-Poveda offers for the first time a detailed analysis of the most relevant Egyptian priestly characters from Egyptian and Graeco-Roman literary and paraliterary sources. The examination of these sources contrasts the self-presentation of Egyptian priests in texts created and circulated within the temple environment with images presented by outside sources, providing a solid base to analyze how these figures were seen in their historical milieu. In the second part of the book, the results of the previous analysis are contrasted with a series of widely-used models employed to understand the historical and intellectual context of Egyptian religion and the Egyptian priesthood in the Graeco-Roman period, questioning the usefulness and applicability of such models. Escolano-Poveda proposes new ways of understanding the role of the Egyptian priests in this context as fundamental actors in the development of the philosophical, scientific, and literary culture of the Hellenistic, Roman, and Late Antique worlds.
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xiii, 395 pages : illustration ; 31 cm. :
Includes bibliographical references (pages 341-373) and index. :
9783447114257
3447114258 :
2190-3646 ;
Neo-Assyrian and Greek Divination in War : Ancient Warfare Series Volume 3 /
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Neo-Assyrian and Greek Divination in War focuses on all divinatory practices which were used in the ancient Near East and Greece in time of war. Divination was a practical way of discovering the will of the gods, and enabled human contact with the divine. Divinatory practices were crucial to decision-taking. The results of divination were especially important during war. This book concentrates on the methods used to obtain all possible information from the divine world which could impact on the results of war. Knowledge of divine plans, verdicts and favors would ensure victory, power and eternal glory. This book is also about the convergence of the ancient Near East and Greek divinatory systems, methods and practices. Step by step, it points out that the Greeks treated divination in a very similar way to the Mesopotamians, and presents the possible routes of transmission of this divine knowledge, which was practiced in both cultures by a group of well-trained professionals.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004429390
9789004429383
Religious Narratives in Contemporary Culture : Between Cultural Memory and Transmediality /
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Religious Narratives in Contemporary Culture: Between Cultural Memory and Transmediality analyses the meaning and role of religion in western cultural practices in the twenty-first century. This inquiry situates itself at the intersection between cultural memory studies and the transmedial study of narrative and art. Contributors focus on genres which have yet to receive significant critical attention within the field, including speculative fiction films and television series, autobiographical prose and poetry, action-adventure video games and heavy metal music. In this time of crisis, where traces of religious thinking still persist in the presence or absence of religious faith, this volume's collective look into some of their cultural embodiments is necessary and timely. The volume is addressed primarily to scholars and students interested in intersections between religious and cultural studies, revisions of traditional religious narratives, literature as a space of reflection on today's world, contemporary media studies and remediation.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004453821
9789004453746
We Have Always Been Transcultural: The Arts as an Example /
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Wolfgang Welsch demonstrates for the first time that transculturality - the mixed constitution of cultures - is by no means only a characteristic of the present, but has de facto determined the composition of cultures since time immemorial. The historical transculturality is demonstrated using examples from the arts. While transculturality was often viewed with reservation where political, social, or psychological levels were at stake, it was rather welcomed and appreciated in the field of art. The book therefore demonstrates the historical prevalence of transculturality via all areas of art and does so with respect to all cultures and continents of our world.
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1 online resource (238 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004697829
Knowledge, Art, and Power : An Outline of a Theory of Experience /
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In Knowledge, Art, and Power: An Outline of a Theory of Experience John Ryder presents an original theory of experience rooted in the American pragmatic naturalist philosophical tradition. The operative assumption of the book is that a clearer understanding of experience provides a richer conception of human being. Beginning with the Deweyan idea of experience as the mutually constitutive engagement of an individual with her environing conditions, the theory posits that there are three general dimensions that condition all of our experience - cognitive (knowledge), aesthetic (art), and political (power). All other constituents and forms of experience, such as language, emotions, ethics, religion, and others, are conditioned by these three general threads that define the fabric of experience and of human life.
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1 online resource. :
9789004429185
9789004429178