The eighteenth century struggled to define architecture as either an art or a science—the image of the architect as a grand figure who synthesizes all other disciplines within a single master plan emerged from this discourse. Immanuel Kant and Johann Wolfgang Goethe described the architect as their equal, a genius with godlike creativity. For writers from Descartes to Freud, architectural reasoning provided a method for critically examining consciousness. The architect, as philosophers liked to think of him, was obligated by the design and construction process to mediate between the abstract and the actual. In On the Ruins of Babel, Daniel Purdy traces this notion back to its wellspring. He surveys the volatile state of architectural theory in the Enlightenment, brought on by the newly emerged scientific critiques of Renaissance cosmology, then shows how German writers redeployed Renaissance terminology so that "harmony," "unity," "synthesis," "foundation," and "orderliness" became states of consciousness, rather than terms used to describe the built world. Purdy's distinctly new interpretation of German theory reveals how metaphors constitute interior life as an architectural space to be designed, constructed, renovated, or demolished. He elucidates the close affinity between Hegel's Romantic aesthetic of space and Daniel Libeskind's deconstruction of monumental architecture in Berlin's Jewish Museum. Through a careful reading of Walter Benjamin's writing on architecture as myth, Purdy details how classical architecture shaped Benjamin's modernist interpretations of urban life, particularly his elaboration on Freud's archaeology of the unconscious. Benjamin's essays on dreams and architecture turn the individualist sensibility of the Enlightenment into a collective and mythic identification between humans and buildings.
From Marilyn to Mussolini, people captivate people. A&E's Biography, best-selling autobiographies, and biographical novels testify to the popularity of the genre. But where does one begin? Collected here are descriptions and evaluations of over 10,000 biographical works, including books of fact and fiction, biographies for young readers, and documentaries and movies, all based on the lives of over 500 historical figures from scientists and writers, to political and military leaders, to artists and musicians. Each entry includes a brief profile, autobiographical and primary sources, and recommended works. Short reviews describe the pertinent biographical works and offer insight into the qualities and special features of each title, helping readers to find the best biographical material available on hundreds of fascinating individuals.
Chinese Sympathies examines how Europeans—German-speaking writers and thinkers in particular—identified with Chinese intellectual and literary traditions following the circulation of Marco Polo's Travels. This sense of affinity expanded and deepened, Daniel Leonhard Purdy shows, as generations of Jesuit missionaries, baroque encyclopedists, Enlightenment moralists, and translators established intellectual regimes that framed China as being fundamentally similar to Europe. Analyzing key German literary texts—theological treatises, imperial histories, tragic dramas, moral philosophies, literary translations, and poetic cycles—Chinese Sympathies traces the paths from baroque-era missionary reports that accommodated Christianity with Confucianism to Goethe's concept of world literature, bridged by Enlightenment debates over cosmopolitanism and sympathy, culminating in a secular principle that allowed readers to identify meaningful similarities across culturally diverse literatures based on shared human experiences. This book is freely available in an open access edition thanks to TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem)—a collaboration of the Association of American Universities, the Association of University Presses, and the Association of Research Libraries—and the generous support of the Pennsylvania State University. Learn more at the TOME website, available at: openmonographs.org. The open access edition is available at Cornell Open (cornellpress.cornell.edu/cornell-open) and other repositories.
Why do we keep talking about so many environmental problems and rarely solve any? If these are scientific issues, then why can't scientists solve them or at least agree on what to do? In his new book, The Moon in the Nautilus Shell, ecologist Daniel Botkin explains why. For one thing, although we live in a world of constantly changing environments and talk a lot about climate change, most of our environmental laws, policies, and scientific premises are based on the idea that the environment is constant, never changing, except when people affect it. For another, we have lost contact with nature in personal ways. Disconnected from our surroundings, we lack the deep understanding and feelings about the environment to make meaningful judgments. The environment has become just another one of those special interests that interferes with our lives. Poised to be a core text of the twenty-first century environmental movement, The Moon in the Nautilus Shell challenges us to think critically about our role in nature.
Twenty-four American specialists provide descriptions of techniques, critiques, and notes on resources and training on a variety of methods used in medical ethics. Individual chapters are devoted to each of 11 methods: philosophy, religion and theology, professional codes, legal methods, casuistry, history, qualitative, ethnographic, quantitative surveys, experimental methods, and economics and decision science. Discussion includes how these methods can relate to one another and how to assess the quality of scholarship in medical ethics in connection with such issues as physician-assisted suicide, euthanasia, and medical genetics. For scholars, teachers, editors and students in all disciplines contributing to the field. c. Book News Inc.
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