In past years liberal Christianity challenged centuries of authoritarian tradition and had great political influence. Today it is widely dismissed as a watering-down of the faith, and more conservative forms of Christianity are increasingly dominant. Can the liberal Christian tradition recover its influence? Hobson argues that a simple revival is not possible, because liberal Christianity consists of two traditions. He aims to transform liberal Christianity through the rediscovery of faith and ritual.
Gloriously maddening though this book will be to those who want humanism to have no connection to religion whatever, its purpose is both generous and hopeful: to demonstrate, to both Christians and post-Christians alike, how much better we understand each other than we think we do. - Francis Spufford Theo Hobson is an exceptionally acute observer of the difficulties and opportunities created by our largely secular age. He can see the self-deceptions we are engaged in as regards our debts to religion – and, in this beautiful book, charts a wise course to a saner world. - Alain de Botton With his usual crisp and rigorous analysis, Theo Hobson invites us to recognise that the core moral values of liberal modernity did not fall ready-made from a secular heaven but are the deposit of a long theological tradition. But – just as typically – he makes it clear that this is a challenge to contemporary religious complacency at least as much as to a smug and patronising secularity. A fine, provocative book. - Rowan Williams In this compelling account of the origins and evolution of our secular worldview, Theo Hobson shows how Christian values continue to underpin our public morality, how faith remains indispensable to Western humanism, and how atheistic humanism represents a dead end. At the same time, he offers a timely warning against the dangers of a religious-secular culture war, given the radically politicized and destructive forms of religion endemic in the world today Here is a fresh and provocative argument about religion and politics – but one that doesn’t fit into the normal boxes. It suggests that although the public creed of the West is best described as ‘secular humanism’ we can only really understand and affirm secular humanism if we see how firmly it is based on Christian norms and values. If we don’t, the West is divided: mired in a stagnant stand-off between fundamentalist atheism and an equally hard-line Christian theism. This book offers a more nuanced and historically more persuasive way forward, showing just how much our secular morality owes to Christianity, and how it can only find coherence through a new and positive view of its origins.
No other writer is so grudgingly admired as Milton. He wrote great poetry, goes the received wisdom, but his creed was narrow, chilling, and inhuman. His reputation is that of a stereotypical Puritan and authoritarian. Yet Theo Hobson maintains that no one opposed religious authoritarianism with such vehemence. Indeed, he argues that no one was so adamant that political freedom is built into the Christian gospel. Milton insisted that Protestantism was compatible with political liberty-that the two ideas are complementary. By treating all ecclesiastical authority with suspicion, he helped to establish the modern ideal of secularism. He was a Christian libertarian who wanted every form of church to wither away, so that the Gospel might be completely free of coercion. Milton's Vision is thus a vital contribution to the contemporary debate about the place of religion in public life. There has never been a study of Milton that highlights his relevance to the core issues of our day: how religion gives rise to and interacts with secular ideals.
This title was first published in 2003:This book offers a bold reading of Protestant tradition from a rhetorical and literary perspective. Arguing that Protestant thought is based in a rhetorical performance of authority, Hobson draws on a wide range of modern and postmodern thought to defend this account of rhetorical authority from various charges of authoritarianism. With close readings of Augustine, Luther, Kierkegaard and Barth, this book develops a new 'rhetorical theology of the Word' and also a new critique of secular modernity, with particular reference to modern literature and the thought of Nietzsche. Confronting the related issues of rhetoric and authority, Hobson provides a provocative account of modern theology which offers new perspectives on theology's relationship to literature and postmodern thought.
A brilliant, short, sharp study of the ecclesiology of Rowan Williams. Hobson examines the development of Williams’ theology and argues that his account of the church is so open, so self-critical, so idealistically Christo-centric and so post-modern that it is questionable whether the traditional institutional structures can survive it. Beneath the apparent orthodoxy, there is a sort of Christian anarchy.
Gloriously maddening though this book will be to those who want humanism to have no connection to religion whatever, its purpose is both generous and hopeful: to demonstrate, to both Christians and post-Christians alike, how much better we understand each other than we think we do. - Francis Spufford Theo Hobson is an exceptionally acute observer of the difficulties and opportunities created by our largely secular age. He can see the self-deceptions we are engaged in as regards our debts to religion – and, in this beautiful book, charts a wise course to a saner world. - Alain de Botton With his usual crisp and rigorous analysis, Theo Hobson invites us to recognise that the core moral values of liberal modernity did not fall ready-made from a secular heaven but are the deposit of a long theological tradition. But – just as typically – he makes it clear that this is a challenge to contemporary religious complacency at least as much as to a smug and patronising secularity. A fine, provocative book. - Rowan Williams In this compelling account of the origins and evolution of our secular worldview, Theo Hobson shows how Christian values continue to underpin our public morality, how faith remains indispensable to Western humanism, and how atheistic humanism represents a dead end. At the same time, he offers a timely warning against the dangers of a religious-secular culture war, given the radically politicized and destructive forms of religion endemic in the world today Here is a fresh and provocative argument about religion and politics – but one that doesn’t fit into the normal boxes. It suggests that although the public creed of the West is best described as ‘secular humanism’ we can only really understand and affirm secular humanism if we see how firmly it is based on Christian norms and values. If we don’t, the West is divided: mired in a stagnant stand-off between fundamentalist atheism and an equally hard-line Christian theism. This book offers a more nuanced and historically more persuasive way forward, showing just how much our secular morality owes to Christianity, and how it can only find coherence through a new and positive view of its origins.
In "Faith", the theologian Theo Hobson explores the notion of faith and the role it plays in our lives. He unpacks the concept to ask whether faith is dependent on religion or whether it is also a general secular phenomenon. In exploring this question Hobson ranges widely over theology, philosophy, politics and psychology and engages with the writings of Christian and atheist thinkers alike. The book begins by considering attitudes to faith in recent works of atheism. Hobson shows how Richard Dawkins and other writers, while attacking faith in one sense, have exhibited faith in another. The book goes on to explore the wider meaning of faith, including our faith in free-market capitalism, the part faith plays in democratic politics and the role faith has in our psychological well-being. To understand the role of faith in modernity, Hobson argues, we must attend to the specifically Christian concept of faith. Hobson then returns to the religious meaning of faith by exploring the account of faith in the Bible and charting the tension between faith and reason in Christian thought. The final chapter takes an autobiographical turn and relates how the author came to take faith seriously and to question what Christians are meant to have faith in. From the Old Testament story of Abraham to the visionary poetry of W. B. Yeats, from the polemics of Luther to the rhetoric of Barack Obama, the author presents us with a fresh and illuminating meditation on the nature of faith. In doing so, he reveals how trust and faith, the religious and secular, are utterly entwined and how the attraction of religious faith outweighs the intellectual difficulties it presents.
In past years liberal Christianity challenged centuries of authoritarian tradition and had great political influence. Today it is widely dismissed as a watering-down of the faith, and more conservative forms of Christianity are increasingly dominant. Can the liberal Christian tradition recover its influence? Hobson argues that a simple revival is not possible, because liberal Christianity consists of two traditions. He aims to transform liberal Christianity through the rediscovery of faith and ritual.
This title was first published in 2003:This book offers a bold reading of Protestant tradition from a rhetorical and literary perspective. Arguing that Protestant thought is based in a rhetorical performance of authority, Hobson draws on a wide range of modern and postmodern thought to defend this account of rhetorical authority from various charges of authoritarianism. With close readings of Augustine, Luther, Kierkegaard and Barth, this book develops a new 'rhetorical theology of the Word' and also a new critique of secular modernity, with particular reference to modern literature and the thought of Nietzsche. Confronting the related issues of rhetoric and authority, Hobson provides a provocative account of modern theology which offers new perspectives on theology's relationship to literature and postmodern thought.
This book concentrates on Milton's religious vision and is more concerned with his prose than his poetry. He insisted that Protestantism was compatible with political liberty - that the two causes are complementary. This was a new vision. By treating all ecclesiastical authority with suspicion, Milton helped to establish the modern ideal of secularism. He was a Christian libertarian who wanted every form of church to wither away, so that the Gospel might be completely free of coercion. Milton's Vision is a vital contribution to the debate about the place of religion in public life. It will appeal to those interested in the history of political thought, especially the concept of liberalism, as well as all those with an interest in religion and literature. This is the first study of Milton that highlights his relevance to the core issues of our day: how religion gives rise to and interacts with secular ideals.
This book discusses the history of economic theories, drawing largely from periodical literature, which is often hard to obtain. The book is divided into sections along linguistic lines (German, Romance and English speaking countries).
The Conference of the Tongues offers a series of startling reflections on fundamental questions of translation. It throws new light on familiar problems and opens up some radically different avenues of thought. It engages with value conflicts in translation and the social accountability of translators, and turns the old issue of equivalence inside out. Drawing on a wealth of contemporary and historical examples, the book teases out the translator's subject-position in translations, makes notions of intertextuality and irony serviceable for translation studies, tries to think translation without transformation, and uses a controversial sociological model to cast a cold eye on the entire world of translating. This is a highly interdisciplinary study that remains aware of the importance of theoretical paradigms as it brings concepts from international law, social systems theory and even theology to bear on translation. Self-reference is a recurrent theme. The book invites us to read translations for what they can tell us about translating and about translators' own perceptions of their role. The argument throughout is for more self-reflexive translation studies.
Seminar paper from the year 2010 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Other, grade: 1,7, University of Osnabrück, course: Forging the American Mind - Literature, Philosophy and the Anticipation of Cognitive Science, language: English, abstract: Dreams can be seen as subjective phenomena that only become realities if we can remember their contents after waking. But how many of you remember your dreams and why do we dream at all? – The first question can easily be answered: About 80% according to the statistics (Jouvet 27). The answer to the second question, however, has puzzled humankind for a long time and even today scientists do not agree on one explicit theory. In my term paper I will present various answers to the question of dreaming given by different dream analysts. At first, I will give a short historical overview on the role of dreams and how they have been seen in different societies. Whereas the Ancient Egypt and the bible attributed a supernatural element to dreams, Aristotle introduced the psychological character of dreams. The main work of my paper will be the analysis of three major perspectives on dream theories: The psychoanalytical, the biological, and the cognitive perspective. Freud argued that dreams express unconscious desires and underlying wishes which he termed the latent content. In contrast, Hobson & McCarley believe that dreams are created because of random activity in the brain during a certain state of sleep (REM). More recent studies done by Stickgold try to be more precise. He argues that the brain is active during sleep because it tries to identify new connections to learn new things from old memory. In a final step, I will apply the different dream theories on a dream from the movie “Requiem for a Dream” (USA, 2000) in order to outline and compare their main features and to show what a dream can tell us about the personality and the life of the dreamer according to the three perspectives.
In Literature for Europe? leading scholars from around Europe reflect on the role played by literature, and by the study of literature, in the constant re-negotiation and re-construction of cultural identities in Europe implied by the accession to the European Union, in the early years of the twenty-first century, of fifteen new member states, with the accession of a number of Balkan states impending, and Turkey waiting in the wings, while at the same time transatlantic relations of the EU to the USA are hotly debated, in politics as in culture, China and India awake as economic giants, and globalization is upon us. At the same time, two of the earliest signatories to the treaties eventually leading to the European Union rejected a proposal for a European Constitution, and linguistic, religious, and ethnic dividing lines show even in some of Europe's oldest nation states. How do literary texts, genres, and forms, thinking about them and teaching them, respond to and shape ongoing processes of European self-understanding in our era of globalization? The volume seeks to answer these questions by charting key developments in a number of fields crucial to the emergence of a European common literary "space" literature and cultural value systems, literature and cultural memory, literary history, translation, the impact of the new media and the information age on matters of literature and identity, and the impact of the postcolonial. Literature for Europe? is a thought-provoking tour d'horizon of cutting-edge developments in the relationship between literary studies and "the matter of Europe," and suggesting an exciting agenda for literary studies in Europe. It will be of interest to everyone working in European studies and/or European literature.
Seminar paper from the year 2010 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Other, grade: 1,7, University of Osnabrück, course: Forging the American Mind - Literature, Philosophy and the Anticipation of Cognitive Science, language: English, abstract: Dreams can be seen as subjective phenomena that only become realities if we can remember their contents after waking. But how many of you remember your dreams and why do we dream at all? - The first question can easily be answered: About 80% according to the statistics (Jouvet 27). The answer to the second question, however, has puzzled humankind for a long time and even today scientists do not agree on one explicit theory. In my term paper I will present various answers to the question of dreaming given by different dream analysts. At first, I will give a short historical overview on the role of dreams and how they have been seen in different societies. Whereas the Ancient Egypt and the bible attributed a supernatural element to dreams, Aristotle introduced the psychological character of dreams. The main work of my paper will be the analysis of three major perspectives on dream theories: The psychoanalytical, the biological, and the cognitive perspective. Freud argued that dreams express unconscious desires and underlying wishes which he termed the latent content. In contrast, Hobson & McCarley believe that dreams are created because of random activity in the brain during a certain state of sleep (REM). More recent studies done by Stickgold try to be more precise. He argues that the brain is active during sleep because it tries to identify new connections to learn new things from old memory. In a final step, I will apply the different dream theories on a dream from the movie "Requiem for a Dream" (USA, 2000) in order to outline and compare their main features and to show what a dream can tell us about the personality and the life of the dreamer according to the three perspectives.
They say the first rule of politics is never to resign. It seems, however, that Britain's leaders have all too often failed – or refused – to heed this sage advice. Fighters and Quitters charts the scandals, controversies and cock-ups that have obliterated dreams of high office, from the ex-minister who faked his death in the 1970s, to Geoffrey Howe's plot to topple Margaret Thatcher, to the many casualties of the Brexit saga. Then there are the sex and spy scandals that heralded doom and, of course, the infamous Profumo Affair. Who jumped and who was pushed? Who battled to keep their job and who collapsed at the first hint of pressure? Who returned, Lazarus-like, for a second act? From humiliating surrenders to principled departures, Fighters and Quitters lifts the lid on the lives of the politicians who fell on their own swords.
The current neuroscientific research in the field of emotion studies highlights a paradigm of scientific research that must be categorized as functional science. As functional science, the neuroscientific theory of the "neuron doctrine" combined with a Jungian theory of the "complex doctrine" hold significant potential for a natural human science and a psychological study of affectivity. Though researchers utilize psychological constructs similar to those proposed by Carl Jung, there appears to be a "fear of Jung," that is, a professional fear of invoking Jung's name or his psychological research. One familiar with Jung's works notice similar terminology, ideas, and even conclusions. The marginalization and neglect of Jung's psychological insights from a serious "empirical-scientific" approach to psychology is due to many factors. Jung did not reduce psychological experience to the body or brain; a reductive science does not consider seriously the reality of the psyche. This work is an initial contribution to a psychological and neurological study of personal emotional experience.
Crosscultural Transgressions offers explorations and critical assessments of research methods and models in translation studies, and points up new questions and directions. Ranging from epistemological questions of description and historiography to the politics of language, including the language of translation research, the book tackles issues of research design and methodology, and goes on to examine the kind of disciplinary knowledge produced in translation studies, who produces it, and whose interests the dominant paradigms serve. The focus is on historical and ideological problems, but the crisis of representation that has affected all the human sciences in recent decades has left its mark. As the essays in this collection explore the transgressive nature of crosscultural representation, whether in translations or in the study of translation, they remain attentive to institutional contexts and develop a self-reflexive stance. They also chart new territory, taking their cue from ethnography, semiotics, sociology and cultural studies, and tackling Meso-American iconic scripts, Bourdieu's constructivism, translation between philosophical paradigms, and the complexities of translation concepts in multicultural societies.
This book approaches the construction of complex and transgressive ‘pervert’ characters in mainstream (not ‘art’), adult-oriented (not pornographic) cinema. It deconstructs an episteme on which to base the construction of characters in screenplays, in a way that acknowledges how semiotic elements of characterisation intersect. In addition, it provides an extended re-phrasing of the notion of ‘the pervert’ as Feiticiero/a: a newly-coined construct that might serve as an underpinning for complex, sexual filmic characters that are both entertaining and challenging to audiences. This re-phrasing speaks to both an existential/phenomenological conception of personhood and to the scholarly tradition of the ‘linguistic turn’ of continental philosophers such as Foucault and Lacan, who represent language not primarily as describing the world but as constructing it. The result is an original and interdisciplinary volume that is brought to coherence through a queer, post-humanist lens.
Clinical Interaction and the Analysis of Meaning evinces a therapeutic vitality all too rare in works of theory. Rather than fleeing from the insights of other disciplines, Dorpat and Miller discover in recent research confirmation of the possibilities of psychoanalytic treatment. In Section I, "Critique of Classical Theory," Dorpat proposes a radical revision of the notion of primary process consonant with contemporary cognitive science. Such a revised conception not only enlarges our understanding of the analytic process; it also provides analysis with a conceptual language that can articulate meaningful connections with a growing body of empirical research about the development and nature of human cognition. In Section II, "Interactional Theory," Miller reverses the direction of inquiry. He begins with the literature on cognitive development and functioning, and proceeds to mine it for concepts relevant to the clinical process. He shows how a revised understanding of the operation of cognition and affect can impart new meaning to basic clinical concepts such as resistance, transference, and level of psychopathology. In Section III, "Applications and Exemplifications," Dorpat concludes this exemplary collaboration by exploring select topics from the standpoint of his and Miller's new psychoanalytic theory. At the heart of the authors' endeavor it "meaning analysis," a concept that integrates an up-to-date model of human information processing with the traditional goals of psychoanalysis. The patient approaches the clinical encounter, they argue, with cognitive-affective schemas that are the accumulatice product of his life experience to date; the manifold meanings ascribed to the clinical interaction must be understood as the product of these schemas rather than as distortions deriving from unconscious, drive-related fantasies. The therapist's goal is to make the patient's meaning-making conscious and thus available for introspection.
From reviews to the first edtion: "Bornscheuer and Kazlauskas have set out, and succeeded, in producing a definitive manual on hydrolytic enzymes (especially lipases, esterases, and proteases) for organic chemists. This is quite simply the best book of its type and can be unreservedly recommended to organic chemists who have an interest in using hydrolytic enzymes in synthesis." (Nicholas J. Turner, University of Edinburgh) "The book is an indispensable source of information on the use of hydrolases in organic synthesis. The subject matter is very well set out, and the chapters are clearly written and presented from a critical viewpoint. Bornscheuer and Kazlauskas have succeeded admirably in describing the capabilities and limitations of the use of hydrolytic enzymes and in critically evaluating them. No library should be without the book." (Fritz Theil, WITEGA Angewandte Werkstoff-Forschung GmbH, Berlin) The second edition of this extremely successful and well-proven book presents recent developments in the use of hydrolases for organic synthesis, reflecting in particular the enormous progress made in enzyme discovery and optimization with a new chapter on "Protein Sources and Optimization of Biocatalyst Performance". The renowned authors survey the stereoselective reactions of hydrolases, especially lipases, esterases and proteases, giving researchers an overview of what has worked in the past so that they can judge how to solve their own synthetic problems. In total, the book contains over one thousand chemical structures, rounded off by some 1,800 invaluable references.
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