Planet Earth is 4.5 billion years old. In just a fraction of that time, one species among countless others has conquered it. Us.
We are the most advanced and most destructive animals ever to have lived. What makes us brilliant? What makes us deadly? What makes us Sapiens?
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What does it mean to be human? How is knowledge possible? Where do moral values come from? Questions like these have stood at the centre of Western philosophy for centuries. In addressing them, philosophers have made certain fundamental assumptions — that we can know our own minds by introspection, that most of our thinking about the world is literal and that reason is disembodied and universal — that are now called into question by well-established results of cognitive science.
Lakoff and Johnson show that a philosophy responsible to the science of the mind offers radically new and detailed understandings of what a person is. This book re-examines the basic concepts of the mind, time, causation, morality and the self; it rethinks a host of philosophical traditions, from the classical Greeks through Kantian morality through modern analytic philosophy. Lakoff and Johnson reveal the metaphorical structure underlying each mode of thought and show how the metaphysics of each theory flows from its metaphors.
Philosophy in the Flesh reveals a radically new understanding of what it means to be human and calls for a thorough rethinking of the Western philosophical tradition. This is philosophy as it has never been seen before.
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Our brains were designed for tribal life, for getting along with a select group of others (Us), and for fighting off everyone else (Them). But modern life has thrust the world’s tribes into a shared space, creating conflicts of interest and clashes of values, along with unprecedented opportunities. As the world shrinks, the moral lines that divide us become more salient and more puzzling. We fight over everything from tax codes to gay marriage to global warming, and we wonder where, if at all, we can find our common ground.
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Our present moment can no longer sustain a stable “us” defined against an alien “them.” So say René Girard and Ivan Illich, radical critics of both Christianity and culture. If they are right, this makes our time an endtime. The end of us against them can deteriorate into the chaos of each against each, or it can open outward into freely chosen communion. It is an expectant—and apocalyptic—time. How does one live in this strange, endtime world? As a wanderer in the odd, cross-culture country Girard and Illich have mapped, the author finds himself in a surprising new place in relation to those who are his other: women, queer folk, refugees, Muslims, atheists, and Indigenous people. In this collection of essays, he blinks, looks around, and makes some field notes.
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Jesus the Forgiving Victim Listening for the Unheard Voice is comprised of four books of essays.
Book One – Starting human, staying human
Book Two – God, not one of the gods
Book Three – The difference Jesus makes
Book Four – Unexpected Insiders
