Philosophy and Religion

From Genesis to Christ, the Bible testifies to God's love and concern for animals. The same self-centeredness that led to the violence and abuse that has marked human relations also caused the abuse and exploitation of animals. The Bible, argues the author, calls upon human beings to stop their violence and abuse of each other and all other creatures. It promises that when they do, the sorrow and

Jesus' preaching was first and foremost about simple living, pacifism, and vegetarianism; he never intended to create a new religion separate from Judaism. Moreover, Jesus' radical Jewish ethics, rather than a new theology, distinguished him and his followers from other Jews. It was the earliest followers of Jesus, the Jewish Christians, who understood Jesus better than any of the gentile Christia

Thomas Keating has been crucial in reviving centering prayer which in effect is a work of praying in the medieval spiritual tradition of lectio divina (sacred reading). This collection of essays by Keating Thomas R. Ward Sarah A. Butler George F. Cairns Paul David Lawson and Gail Fitzpatrick-Hopler furthers that work by expounding centering prayer itself and applying it to other and more outwardly

Being Upright takes us beyond the conventional interpretation of ethical precepts to the ultimate meaning that informs them. Reb Anderson first introduces us to the fundamental ideas of Zen Buddhist practice. Who was Shakyamuni Buddha and what was his central teaching? What does it mean to be a bodhisattva and take the bodhisattva vow? Why should we confess and acknowledge our ancient twisted karm

What would we find if, over a period of time, we paid careful attention to the coincidences in our lives? What would clusters of coincidental events reveal? Susan M. Watkins examines, from the inside out, coincidences in her own life and asks, What's going on here? She discovers powerful insights into the workings of the conscious mind, into the concepts of time and space, past and future. Her exa

This DVD contains no lewd or graphic imagery and is illustrated entirely by the world's heritage of art. The knowledge and wisdom presented is the synthesis of the teachings of Jesus, Buddha, Moses, Padmasambhava, the Dalai Lama, Samael Aun Weor and many more. Temptation. The serpent. The expulsion from Paradise. Archetypal stories that have moved millions of human beings: but who has understood t

For thousands of years, many have wondered at the tales of the mysterious force called the serpent power or the kundalini, yet the method to attain this power has been hidden, misunderstood or sometimes, intentionally sabotaged. Now, like a refreshing spring breeze, Samael Aun Weor wipes away the dust and reveals the sacred mysteries of our most ancient and holy science. With a firm foundation in

All philosophy is a footnote to Plato. No other person so shaped the Western world and the way we think about it.Plato's questions remain as real for us today as they were 2500 years ago, and as human beings, we can not avoid their presence nor shirk our responsibility to attempt to answer them:What is Justice?What is Truth?What is Beauty?What kind of society should we build?How do we know what we

Postmodernism For Beginners features the thoughts of Foucault on power and knowledge, Jameson on mapping the postmodern, Baudrillard on the media, Harvey on time-space compression, Derrida on deconstruction and Deleuze and Guattari on rhizomes. The book also discusses postmodern artifacts such as Madonna, cyberpunk sci-fi, Buddhist ecology and teledildonics. If you are like most people, yo

“What is Structuralism? How is it possible? And once the structures of Structuralism have been discovered, how is Poststructuralism possible?”Thus begins Don Palmer's STRUCTURALISM AND POSTSTRUCTURALISM FOR BEGINNERS. If Nobel or Pulitzer ever made a prize for making the most difficult philosophers and ideas accessible to the greatest number of people, one of the leading candidates would certainly

Derrida is one of those annoying geniuses you can take a class on, read half-a-dozen books by and still have no idea what he’s talking about. Derrida’s ‘writing’ is definitely confusing (it’s like he’s pulling the rug out from under the rug that he pulled out from under philosophy). But beneath the confusion, like the heartbeat of a bird in your hand, you can fe

The ideas of the German philosopher Martin Heidegger have been described as an intellectual time bomb, as some of the most revolutionary thought in Western history. Despite the enormous amount of secondary scholarships available on Heidegger, it is – due to the complexity of his thought and the density of his writing – difficult for the curious beginner to gain an insight into Heidegger's philosop

The Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard was one of the most original thinkers of the 19th Century – and one of the most enigmatic men who ever walked the Earth.Philosophically, Kierkegaard was the “bridge” that led from Hegel to Existentialism.Kierkegaard abhorred Hegel's abstract, Know-it-all idealism that tried to capture reality in a few words. Kierkegaard's attack on social and religious comp

SARTRE FOR BEGINNERS is an accessible yet sophisticated introduction to the life and works of the famous French philosopher, Jean Paul Sartre. Sartre was a member of the French underground during WWII, a novelist, a playwright, and a major influence in French political and intellectual life.The book opens with a biographical section, introducing the significant events in the life of the man who co

EXISTENTIALISM FOR BEGINNERS is an entertaining romp through the history of a philosophical movement that has had a broad and enduring influence on Western culture. From the middle of the Nineteenth Century through the late Twentieth Century, existentialism informed our politics and art, and still exerts its influence today. Tracing the movement's beginnings with close-up views of seminal figures

Deconstruction is so labyrinthine (and rumored to be fatal) that it's become the monster that murdered philosophy. When Jacques Derrida, the father of deconstruction, uses buzz-words such as “phallogocentrism” and “transcendental signified,” humanities students and aspiring philosophers may get weak in the knees.Following up on the success of DERRIDA FOR BEGINNERS, Jim  Powell's DERRIDA FOR BEGINN

Jacques Lacan is probably the most influential psychoanalyst since Freud (of the roughly 20,000 psychoanalysts in the world, about half are 'Lacanians') yet most people know nothing about him. The 10,000 analysts who use Lacan's ideas work mostly in France, Spain, Italy, and South America. To the rest of the world, including England and America, Lacan is a genius-in-waiting, due to be 'discovered'

Philosopher, psychoanalyst, politician, propagandist, prophet...although difficult to categorize, Frantz Fanon (1925-1961) is one of the most important thinkers of the 20th century and one of our most powerful writers on race and revolution. The book opens with a biography, following Fanon from his birthplace of Martinique through combat in World War II and education in France, to his heroic in