Satan is not God's enemy in the Bible, and he's not always bad-much less evil. Through the lens of the Old and New Testaments, Erik Butler explores the Devil in literature, theology, visual art, and ...music from antiquity up to the present, discussing canonical authors (Dante, Milton, and Goethe among them) and a wealth of lesser-known sources. Since his first appearance in the Book of Job, Satan has pursued a single objective: to test human beings, whose moral worth and piety leave plenty of room for doubt. Satan can be manipulative, but at worst he facilitates what mortals are inclined to do anyway. "The Devil made me do it" does not hold up in the court of cosmic law. With wit and surprising examples, this book explains why.
This book examines the discourse on ‘primitive thinking’ in early 20th century Germany. It explores texts from the social sciences, writings on art and language and – most centrally – literary works ...by Robert Musil, Walter Benjamin, Gottfried Benn and Robert Müller, focusing on three figures of alterity prominent in European primitivism: indigenous cultures, children, and the mentally ill.
Felt Time Wittmann, Marc; Butler, Erik
2016, 2016-02-19, 2016-02-10
eBook
We have widely varying perceptions of time. Children have trouble waiting for anything. ("Are we there yet?") Boredom is often connected to our sense of time passing (or not passing). As ...people grow older, time seems to speed up, the years flitting by without a pause. How does our sense of time come about? In Felt Time , Marc Wittmann explores the riddle of subjective time, explaining our perception of time -- whether moment by moment, or in terms of life as a whole. Drawing on the latest insights from psychology and neuroscience, Wittmann offers a new answer to the question of how we experience time.Wittmann explains, among other things, how we choose between savoring the moment and deferring gratification; why impulsive people are bored easily, and why their boredom is often a matter of time; whether each person possesses a personal speed, a particular brain rhythm distinguishing quick people from slow people; and why the feeling of duration can serve as an "error signal," letting us know when it is taking too long for dinner to be ready or for the bus to come. He considers the practice of mindfulness, and whether it can reduce the speed of life and help us gain more time, and he describes how, as we grow older, subjective time accelerates as routine increases; a fulfilled and varied life is a long life. Evidence shows that bodily processes -- especially the heartbeat -- underlie our feeling of time and act as an internal clock for our sense of time. And Wittmann points to recent research that connects time to consciousness; ongoing studies of time consciousness, he tells us, will help us to understand the conscious self.
Our competitive, service-oriented societies are taking a toll on the late- modern individual. Rather than improving life, multitasking, "user-friendly" technology, and the culture of convenience are ...producing disorders that range from depression to attention deficit disorder to borderline personality disorder. Byung-Chul Han interprets the spreading malaise as an inability to manage negative experiences in an age characterized by excessive positivity and the universal availability of people and goods. Stress and exhaustion are not just personal experiences, but social and historical phenomena as well. Denouncing a world in which every against-the-grain response can lead to further disempowerment, he draws on literature, philosophy, and the social and natural sciences to explore the stakes of sacrificing intermittent intellectual reflection for constant neural connection.
Evidence-Based Answer There is insufficient evidence to recommend structural brain MRI to diagnose Alzheimer disease in patients with MCI. Because of its low accuracy, it should not be used as a ...stand-alone tool in identifying evidence of Alzheimer disease in patients with MCI.1 (Strength of Recommendation: B, based on inconsistent or limited-quality patient-oriented evidence.) SUMMARY TABLE Utility of MRI for Diagnosing the Progression of Mild Cognitive Impairment to Alzheimer Disease* Region of MRI Participants (studies) Sensitivity (%) Specificity (%) PPV (%) NPV (%) Hippocampus 2,209 (22) 73 71 52 86 Medial temporal lobe 1,077 (7) 64 65 44 81 Lateral ventricles 1,077 (5) 57 64 40 78 MRI = magnetic resonance imaging; NPV = negative predictive value; PPV = positive predictive value. *—Assuming Alzheimer disease prevalence of 30%. Practice Pointers Alzheimer disease is the most common cause of dementia, accounting for 60% to 80% of dementia cases.2 Onset typically occurs after 65 years of age and is often preceded by a predementia phase called MCI.2 MCI has progressed to dementia when these cognitive changes significantly interfere with a person's work or usual daily activities.3 Identifying which patients with MCI will progress to Alzheimer disease could be helpful in early intervention and planning for patients and their families. Patients were diagnosed with MCI by history and neuropsychological testing; their baseline Mini Mental State Examination score was 22 to 29 (median = 27). Because the criteria for diagnosing MCI have changed over the past 20 years, the review authors accepted studies that used varying diagnostic criteria and included all subtypes of MCI (e.g., amnestic single domain, amnestic multiple domain, nonamnestic single domain, nonamnestic multiple domain).
What are the various atmospheres or moods that the reading of literary works can trigger? Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht has long argued that the function of literature is not so much to describe, or to ...re-present, as to make present. Here, he goes one step further, exploring the substance and reality of language as a material component of the world—impalpable hints, tones, and airs that, as much as they may be elusive, are no less matters of actual fact. Reading, we discover, is an experiencing of specific moods and atmospheres, or Stimmung. These moods are on a continuum akin to a musical scale. They present themselves as nuances that challenge our powers of discernment and description, as well as language's potential to capture them. Perhaps the best we can do is to point in their direction. Conveying personal encounters with poetry, song, painting, and the novel, this book thus gestures toward the intangible and in the process, constitutes a bold defense of the subjective experience of the arts.
Friedrich Kittler (1943–2011) combined the study of literature, cinema, technology, and philosophy in a manner sufficiently novel to be recognized as a new field of academic endeavor in his native ...Germany. "Media studies," as Kittler conceived it, meant reflecting on how books operate as films, poetry as computer science, and music as military equipment. This volume collects writings from all stages of the author's prolific career. Exemplary essays illustrate how matters of form and inscription make heterogeneous source material (e.g., literary classics and computer design) interchangeable on the level of function—with far-reaching consequences for our understanding of the humanities and the "hard sciences." Rich in counterintuitive propositions, sly humor, and vast erudition, Kittler's work both challenges the assumptions of positivistic cultural history and exposes the over-abstraction and language games of philosophers such as Heidegger and Derrida. The twenty-three pieces gathered here document the intellectual itinerary of one of the most original thinkers in recent times—sometimes baffling, often controversial, and always stimulating.
The book offers a new introduction to Jacques Derrida and to Deconstruction as an important strand of Continental Philosophy. From his early writings on phenomenology and linguistics to his later ...meditations on war, terrorism, and justice, Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) achieved prominence on an international scale by addressing as many different audiences as he did topics. Yet despite widespread acclamation, his work has never been considered easy. Rendering accessible debates that marked more than four decades of engagement and inquiry, Susanne Lüdemann traces connections between the philosopher's own texts and those of his many interlocutors, past and present.Unlike conventional introductions, Politics of Deconstruction offers a number of personal approaches to reading Derrida and invites readers to find their own. Emphasizing the relationship between philosophy and politics, it shows that, with Deconstruction, there is much more at stake than an "academic" discussion, for Derrida's work deals with all the burning political and intellectual challenges of our time. The author's own professional experience in both the United States and in Europe, which particularly inform her chapter on Derrida's reception in the United States, opens a unique perspective on a unique thinker, one that rewards specialists and newcomers alike.
