God and the world of signs Trinity, evolution, and the metaphysical semiotics of C.S. Peirce /
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Christianity has been described as "a religion seeking a metaphysic". Drawing on the philosophy of C. S. Peirce, Robinson develops a metaphysical framework centred around a 'semiotic model' of the Trinity. The model invites a fresh approach to the claim that Jesus was the incarnate Word of God and suggests a new way of understanding how nature may bear the imprint of the Triune Creator in the form of 'vestiges of the Trinity in creation'. Scientific spin-offs include a new perspective on the problem of the origin of life and a novel hypothesis about the evolution of human distinctiveness. The result is an original contribution to Trinitarian theology and a bold new way of integrating philosophy, science and religion.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [355]-367) and indexes. :
9789004195899 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Palace ware across the Neo-Assyrian imperial landscape : social value and semiotic meaning /
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In Palace Ware Across the Neo-Assyrian Imperial Landscape , Alice Hunt investigates the social and symbolic meaning of Palace Ware by its cultural audience in the Neo-Assyrian central and annexed provinces, and the unincorporated territories, including buffer zones and vassal states. Traditionally, Palace Ware has been equated with imperial identity. By understanding these vessels as a vehicle through which interregional and intercultural relationships were negotiated and maintained she reveals their complexity gaining a more nuanced view of imperial dynamics. Palace Ware Across the Neo-Assyrian Imperial Landscape is the first work of its kind; providing in-depth analysis of the formal and fabric characteristic, production technology, and raw material provenance of Palace Ware, and locating these data within the larger narratives of power, presentation, symbol and meaning that shaped the Neo-Assyrian imperial landscape.
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1 online resource (xx, 248 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004304123 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Embodied aesthetics : proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Aesthetics and the Embodied Mind, 26th-28th August 2013 /
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This volume discusses the role of embodiment in the reevaluation of aesthetics as a process of bodily mediated meaning-making. It focuses on the bodily basis of aesthetic appreciation from an evolutionary point of view, on the bodily physical structures such as the brain involved in perception, on aesthetic experience and appreciation, on the role of physiological responses in experiencing the objects of the environment aesthetically, on the role of one's own body in motion in the engagement with the environment, on somatic responses and the experience of meaning, on the pre-reflective experience of the body, on the role of the interplay of different types of physical and sensory activities in the process of education to art appreciation.
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Includes index. :
1 online resource (vii, 150 pages) : illustrations (some color) :
9789004281516 :
0922-6001 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Signs, Intentionality, and Imaginability : Selected Papers /
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This book contains essays by Horst Ruthrof, tracing the author's intellectual history from his encounter with literature to his critique of the philosophy of language. If you have ever felt that our linguistic and philosophical approaches to language lack an explanation of what renders it so powerful, you share the author's motivation for writing these essays. With tools from Locke, Kant, Peirce, and especially Husserl, the author redefines natural language as "a set of social instructions for schematically imagining, and acting in, a world" and gradually identifies what grants natural language its power: imaginability .
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1 online resource (375 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004742314
Machines intimes : de Baudelaire à Barthes (en passant par Proust et Bataille) /
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Le retour spectaculaire du refoulé est l'un des déterminants du rythme particulier de la modernité. La machine y a aussi sa part. Quand les désirs et les peurs liés à la machine, abandonnés, silencieux, cachés derrière le voile du progrès, émergent, ils créent une sorte de phénoménologie de la machine, qui pendant de nombreuses décennies constitue un point de référence pour des activités littéraires et artistiques. La machine s'y trouve, pour ainsi dire, intériorisée ; inextricablement liée aux affects et aux désirs, elle devient ce que je me propose d'appeler machine intime. Ce processus est étudié ici à travers les œuvres de Baudelaire, Proust, Bataille, Barthes, et quelques autres, dont Roussel, Artaud, Didi-Huberman, ainsi que dans la littérature érotique contemporaine. The spectacular return of the repressed is one of the determinants of the particular rhythm of modernity. The machine also plays its part. When the desires and fears linked to the machine, abandoned, silent, hidden behind the veil of progress, emerge, they create a kind of phenomenology of the machine, which for many decades constituted a point of reference for literary and artistic activities. The machine is, so to speak, interiorised; inextricably linked to affects and desires, it becomes what I propose to call an intimate machine. This process is explored here through the works of Baudelaire, Proust, Bataille, Barthes and others, including Roussel, Artaud and Didi-Huberman, as well as in contemporary erotic literature.
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1 online resource (315 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004742734
Divining Disaster. Signs of Catastrophe in Ancient Greek Culture /
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In a world riddled with earthquakes and plagued by epidemics, how did the ancient Greeks cope with, and make sense of, disaster? As our present-day environment is perceived to be increasingly perilous, this book includes the ancient Greek world in the longue durée of disaster discourse. Drawing on anthropological disaster studies, ecocriticism, and cognitive studies, this study considers disaster as a semiotic phenomenon marked by uncertainty. Divining disaster, then, functions as a hermeneutic form of disaster management that alleviates uncertainty and assigns agency, not only in religious practices such as oracle consultation but also in historical and mythological narratives.
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1 online resource (408 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004739581
Scytho-Alano-Ossetica : From Scythian Saddle to Ossetic Word /
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The present volume brings together a carefully curated collection of scholarly essays that offer a multidimensional portrait of Ossetian cultural continuity from antiquity to the present. It presents original research by leading experts in the fields of Ossetology, Caucasian history, mythology, and ethnography. Each contribution provides a rigorous examination of particular elements-linguistic, mythological, archaeological, ritualistic, or historical-that illuminate the complex interplay between antiquity and modernity in Ossetian society. The articles included in this volume, appeared in Russian from the late 19th century to the present day, essentially represent landmark publications on the Scytho-Alano-Ossetian problematics. The volume, in essence, reflects the development of this field of Iranian Studies over nearly a century and a half.
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1 online resource (248 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004754478
Conversion in the age of pluralism /
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The theme of conversion constitutes a privileged point to study the framework linking an individual to the sociocultural contexts in which he or she is included. Changes in personal biographies and sociocultural change are interwoven when we speak of conversion: values, speech, norms, behaviors, beliefs, lifestyles, interests--everything is open to potential debate when an individual \'converts.\' Conversion is especially developed here through a connection with the dynamics of pluralism, which appears to be the most peculiar cultural characteristic of our era: what does it mean to speak of \'conversion\' in a time in which it seems that the presumption of only one \'true\' truth no longer exists, while instead many different truths live together, each with its own judgment criteria.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references. :
9789047444947 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Gender across Media Landscapes /
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The end of the first quarter of the 21st century invites us to revisit what gender means in society and how it has shaped our literal and cultural landscapes. This volume seeks to explore these spaces from interdisciplinary perspectives. The contributions span both "highbrow" art and popular culture, mapping interactions between gender and landscape as represented through numerous media. From urban to wild landscapes, distant planets, but also discursive practices, gendered domesticity, and the landscape of the body, the reader is invited to reflect on gender as a ubiquitous cultural marker. While contributing to the growing body of work on gender, media, and landscape, the volume lays out a new groundwork for developments in interdisciplinary studies on gender and its possible futures.
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1 online resource (350 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004754591
The Late Medieval Image Debate in English and French Literature, 1160-1500 : Constructive Iconoclasm /
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Early modern reformers claimed to reject a superstitious, image-obsessed medieval past-but what if medieval thinkers had already begun to critique sacred images? This book reveals how late medieval literature reimagined breaking images as radical creation, not destruction. Step into the world of Arthurian legends, The Romance of the Rose , and saints' lives, where shattered statues and broken relics generate new meaning. Explore the writings of Chaucer and Julian of Norwich, who grapple with divine truth not by preserving images, but by dismantling and remaking them. This book uncovers a literary self that is dynamic, assertive, and subversive centuries before the Renaissance claims to invent it.
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1 online resource (269 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004745827
Sing and Rejoice, O daughter of Zion (Zechariah 2:14) : Studies in Pesiqta Rabbati /
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Pesiqta Rabbati is a midrashic collection of homilies derived from the Hebrew bible related to Jewish observance of festivals, fast days, and special Sabbaths. The book underscores the importance and purpose of Pesiqta Rabbati: to explain the centrality of midrash in the life, culture, and ethnicity of Jewish belief and practice, as well as the importance of practice sustaining the continuity of Jews and their identity. Textual details are drawn from contemporary events (5th- 11th century) and Jewish ethics. Topics include apocalyptic thought, the suffering Messiah ben Ephraim, the Jerusalem Temple, and reactions to Christianity and Islam. Methods applied are text linguistics, borderland theories, halachic discourse analysis, semiotics, and literary criticism.
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1 online resource (557 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004748309
New Testament Semiotics : Linguistic Signs, the Process of Signification, and the Hermeneutics of Discursive Resistance /
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Focusing on linguistic signs, New Testament Semiotics navigates through different realist and nominalist traditions. From this perspective, Saussure's and Peirce's traditions exhibit similarities. Questioning Derrida's and Eco's semiotics based on their misuse of Peirce's innovations, Dr. Privatdozent Timo Eskola rehabilitates Benveniste and Ricoeur. A sign is about conditions and functions. Sign as a role is a manifestation of participation. Serving as a sign entails participation in a web of relations, participation in a network of meanings, and adoption of a set of rules. We should focus on sentences and networks, not primitive reference or binary oppositions. Enunciations are postulations producing evanescent meanings. Finally, the study suggests a linguistic approach to metatheology that is based on hermeneutics of discursive resistance.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004465763
9789004465756
Beyond Biblical theology : sacralized culturalism in Heikki Räisänen's hermeneutics /
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Reading Heikki Räisänen's hermeneutics in context, Timo Eskola explores the development of Western New Testament interpretation. Reclaiming a Wredean approach to the Scriptures, Räisänen focuses on tradition and interpretation. He builds on Weberian sociology, adopted through Peter Berger's theories, and substitutes sacralized culturalism for biblical theology. After examining fourteenth century Quran-criticism and its impact on Reimarus, Eskola discusses the genesis of the revised history-of-religion theory that Räisänen developed when investigating the Quran's relationship to the Bible. Sociology then becomes a link between standard historicism and poststructuralism as Räisänen reinterprets Berger's sociology of knowledge. Räisänen's sacralized culturalism finally becomes the theory from which his magnum opus The Rise of Christian Beliefs has been written.
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1 online resource (xii, 481 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 457-472) and index. :
9789004258037 :
0928-0731 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Aztec Religion and Art of Writing : Investigating Embodied Meaning, Indigenous Semiotics, and the Nahua Sense of Reality /
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In her groundbreaking investigation from the perspective of the aesthetics of religion, Isabel Laack explores the religion and art of writing of the pre-Hispanic Aztecs of Mexico. Inspired by postcolonial approaches, she reveals Eurocentric biases in academic representations of Aztec cosmovision, ontology, epistemology, ritual, aesthetics, and the writing system to provide a powerful interpretation of the Nahua sense of reality. Laack transcends the concept of "sacred scripture" traditionally employed in religions studies in order to reconstruct the Indigenous semiotic theory and to reveal how Aztec pictography can express complex aspects of embodied meaning. Her study offers an innovative approach to nonphonographic semiotic systems, as created in many world cultures, and expands our understanding of human recorded visual communication. This book will be essential reading for scholars and readers interested in the history of religions, Mesoamerican studies, and the ancient civilizations of the Americas. 'This excellent book, written with intellectual courage and critical self-awareness, is a brilliant, multilayered thought experiment into the images and stories that made up the Nahua sense of reality as woven into their sensational ritual performances and colorful symbolic writing system.' - Davíd Carrasco, Harvard University
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004392014 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Paul's glory-christology : tradition and rhetoric /
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In 1927 C.A.A. Scott, while commenting on the apostle Paul's Christology, remarked that the \'history of the word Glory in the Bible has yet to be written.\' By using methodology developed in semantics, semiotics, and, more generally, literary theory, Newman examines the origin and rhetoric of Paul's Glory-Christology. The investigation involves three distinct tasks: (1) to plot the tradition-history of Glory which formed part of Paul's linguistic world, (2) to examine Paul's letter, in light of the reconstructed tradition-history of Glory, in order to discern the rationale of Paul's identification of Christ as Glory and, (3) to map out the implications of such an identification for Paul's theological and rhetorical strategy. On the basis of this study, four conclusions are reached for understanding Paul. First, Paul inherited a symbolic universe with signs already \'full\' of signification. Second, knowing the (diachronically acquired) connotative range of a \'surface\' symbol (e.g. Glory) aids in discerning Paul's precise contingent strategy. Third, knowing the \'surface\' symbol's referential power defines and contributes to the \'deeper structure\' of Paul's theological grammar. Finally, the heuristic power within the construals of the Glory tradition coalesce in Paul's Christophany and thus provide coherence at the \'deepest\' level of Paul's Christology.
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Revision of the author's thesis (Ph. D.)--Baylor University, 1989. :
1 online resource (xvi, 305 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 248-281) and indexes. :
9789004267022 :
0167-9732 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Micro and Macro Philosophy: Organicism in Biology, Philosophy, and Politics /
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What role can philosophy play in a world dominated by neoliberalism and globalization? Must it join universalist ideologies as it did in past centuries? Or might it turn to ethnophilosophy and postmodern fragmentation? Micro and Macro Philosophy argues that universalist cosmopolitanism and egocentric culturalism are not the only alternatives. Western philosophy has created a false dichotomy. A better solution can be found in an organic philosophy that functions through micro-macro interactions. According to biologists, the twentieth century was the century of the gene, while the twenty-first century is destined to be the century of the organic. Micro and Macro Philosophy attempts to establish such a view in philosophy: by highlighting micro-macro patterns found in history, it seeks to design new ways of "organic thinking" in the human sciences.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004440425
9789004439078