Perhaps Hermeticism has fascinated so many people precisely because it has made it possible to produce many analogies and relationships to various traditions: to Platonism in its many varieties, to Stoicism, to Gnostic ideas, and even to certain Aristotelian doctrines. The Gnostic, the esoteric, the Platonist, or the deist has each been able to find something familiar in the writings. One just had to have a penchant for remote antiquity, for the idea of a Golden Age, in order for Hermeticism, with its aura of an ancient Egyptian revelation, to have enjoyed such outstanding success."—from the Introduction Hermes Trismegistus, "thrice-great Hermes," emerged from the amalgamation of the wisdom gods Hermes and Thoth and is one of the most enigmatic figures of intellectual history. Since antiquity, the legendary "wise Egyptian" has been considered the creator of several mystical and magical writings on such topics as alchemy, astrology, medicine, and the transcendence of God. Philosophers of the Renaissance celebrated Hermes Trismegistus as the founder of philosophy, Freemasons called him their forefather, and Enlightenment thinkers championed religious tolerance in his name. To this day, Hermes Trismegistus is one of the central figures of the occult—his name is synonymous with the esoteric. In this scholarly yet accessible introduction to the history of Hermeticism and its mythical founder, Florian Ebeling provides a concise overview of the Corpus Hermeticum and other writings attributed to Hermes. He traces the impact of Christian and Muslim versions of the figure in medieval Europe, the power of Hermeticism and Paracelsian belief in Renaissance thought, the relationship to Pietism and to Freemasonry in early modern Europe, and the relationship to esotericism and semiotics in the modern world.
Perhaps Hermeticism has fascinated so many people precisely because it has made it possible to produce many analogies and relationships to various traditions: to Platonism in its many varieties, to Stoicism, to Gnostic ideas, and even to certain Aristotelian doctrines. The Gnostic, the esoteric, the Platonist, or the deist has each been able to find something familiar in the writings. One just had to have a penchant for remote antiquity, for the idea of a Golden Age, in order for Hermeticism, with its aura of an ancient Egyptian revelation, to have enjoyed such outstanding success."—from the Introduction Hermes Trismegistus, "thrice-great Hermes," emerged from the amalgamation of the wisdom gods Hermes and Thoth and is one of the most enigmatic figures of intellectual history. Since antiquity, the legendary "wise Egyptian" has been considered the creator of several mystical and magical writings on such topics as alchemy, astrology, medicine, and the transcendence of God. Philosophers of the Renaissance celebrated Hermes Trismegistus as the founder of philosophy, Freemasons called him their forefather, and Enlightenment thinkers championed religious tolerance in his name. To this day, Hermes Trismegistus is one of the central figures of the occult—his name is synonymous with the esoteric. In this scholarly yet accessible introduction to the history of Hermeticism and its mythical founder, Florian Ebeling provides a concise overview of the Corpus Hermeticum and other writings attributed to Hermes. He traces the impact of Christian and Muslim versions of the figure in medieval Europe, the power of Hermeticism and Paracelsian belief in Renaissance thought, the relationship to Pietism and to Freemasonry in early modern Europe, and the relationship to esotericism and semiotics in the modern world.
Drawing on recent philosophical developments in hermeneutics and poststructuralism, The Fragility of Language and the Encounter with God offersÊa theological account of the contingency of language and perception and of how acknowledging that contingency transforms the perennial theological question of the development of doctrine. Klug applies this account to humanity's encounter with God and its translation into language. Because there exists no neutral epistemological standpoint, Klug integrates contemporary insights on the theory of the subject (especially those of _i_ek and Badiou) and presents humanity as a subject that transforms its experience of and with God into language and places it in a shared space for reception. But can the speaking subject have authority and legitimacy in making statements about the Absolute? What role do the Christian faithful play in evaluating that authority? These questions are addressed both to biblical texts and doctrinal statements. Crucial is the Catholic perspective that legitimate statements of faith and insights are only possible through the Holy Spirit. However, humanity cannot command or control the Holy Spirit but can only show its influence indirectly through the receptive tradition of the universal church. The Fragility of Language and the Encounter with God arguesÊthat statements of faith cannot overcome contingency. Instead, the Catholic notion of receptive tradition attempts to cope rationally with the fragility of perception and language in humanity's orientation toward God.
Neither Spem in alium, the widely acclaimed ‘songe of fortie partes’ by Thomas Tallis, nor Alessandro Striggio’s forty-part Mass is the largest-scale counterpoint work in Western music. The actual winner is Gregorio Ballabene, a relatively unknown Roman maestro di cappella, a contemporary of Giovanni Paisiello, Joseph Haydn and Luigi Boccherini, who composed in forty-eight parts for twelve choirs. His Mass saw only a public rehearsal and was never performed liturgically despite all of Ballabene’s efforts to promote it. On closer inspection, however, the work deserves special consideration as a piece of outstanding combinatory creativity – the product of a talent able to conceive, structure and realise a project of colossal dimensions. It might even be claimed that if Charles Burney had gained knowledge of it, all derogatory comments by nineteenth-century music historians would not have succeeded in extinguishing the interest of later generations. Ballabene’s Mass has remained completely unstudied until today, even though the score survives in prominent collections. This study offers, for the first time, a historical and analytical perspective on this overlooked manifestation of a very individual musical intelligence.
In Beyond the Visible Church, theologian Florian Klug investigates the Abel motif hermeneutically throughout Christian church history. By showing how the biblical motif of Abel was read and used by representative theologians like Augustine, Bonaventure, Martin Luther, Yves Congar, and others of each epoch, Klug builds the story of the Church’s self-conception and shows how it has evolved over time. By tracing this theological and ecclesiological history and how the motif formed theologians and the Church over time, Klug shows readers a new way to conceive and understand God’s universal will for salvation. By deconstructing and reconstructing the historical occurrences of these ideas, Klug demonstrates that the Church’s self-conception is not yet complete. This unique and ground-breaking study opens new ways forward for Catholic ecclesiology—hope for today’s universal Church.
Designing artificial systems with catalytic efficiencies to rival those of natural enzymes is one of the great challenges facing science today. This introduction to the exciting area of artificial enzymes is suitable for both students and more senior researchers.
The aim of this work is to initiate a systematic study of those properties of Banach space complexes that are stable under certain perturbations. A Banach space complex is essentially an object of the form 1 op-l oP +1 ... --+ XP- --+ XP --+ XP --+ ... , where p runs a finite or infiniteinterval ofintegers, XP are Banach spaces, and oP : Xp ..... Xp+1 are continuous linear operators such that OPOp-1 = 0 for all indices p. In particular, every continuous linear operator S : X ..... Y, where X, Yare Banach spaces, may be regarded as a complex: O ..... X ~ Y ..... O. The already existing Fredholm theory for linear operators suggested the possibility to extend its concepts and methods to the study of Banach space complexes. The basic stability properties valid for (semi-) Fredholm operators have their counterparts in the more general context of Banach space complexes. We have in mind especially the stability of the index (i.e., the extended Euler characteristic) under small or compact perturbations, but other related stability results can also be successfully extended. Banach (or Hilbert) space complexes have penetrated the functional analysis from at least two apparently disjoint directions. A first direction is related to the multivariable spectral theory in the sense of J. L.
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