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Author: Hans Blumenberg
Publisher:
Published: 2010
Total Pages: 157
ISBN-13: 9780804735797
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →In this accessible collection of short meditations on various topics, Blumenberg works as a detective of ideas scouring the periphery of intellectual and philosophical history for clues—metaphors, gestures, anecdotes—essential to grasping human finitude.
Author: Hans Blumenberg
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 1997
Total Pages: 148
ISBN-13: 9780262024112
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This elegant essay exemplifies Blumenberg's ideas about the ability of the historical study of metaphor to illuminate essential aspects of being human. Originally published in the same year as his monumental Work on Myth, Shipwreck with Spectator traces the evolution of the complex of metaphors related to the sea, to shipwreck, and to the role of the spectator in human culture from ancient Greece to modern times. The sea is one of humanity's oldest metaphors for life, and a sea journey, Blumenberg observes, has often stood for our journey through life. We all know the role that shipwrecks can play in this journey, and at some level we have all played witness to others' wrecks, standing in safety and knowing that there is nothing we can do to help, yet fixed comfortably or uncomfortably in our ambiguous role as spectator. Through Blumenberg's seemingly inexhaustible knowledge of letters, from ancient texts through nineteenth-century reminiscences and modern speeches, we see layer upon layer revealed in the meanings humans have given to these metaphors; and in this way we begin to understand what metaphors can do that more straightforward modes of expression cannot. This edition of Shipwreck with Spectator also includes "Prospect for a Theory of Nonconceptuality", an essay that recounts the evolution of Blumenberg's ideas about metaphorology in the years following his early manifesto "Paradigms for a Metaphorology".
Author: Hans Blumenberg
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 2022-12-15
Total Pages: 242
ISBN-13: 1501766627
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The Readability of the World represents Hans Blumenberg's first extended demonstration of the metaphorological method he pioneered in Paradigms for a Metaphorology. For Blumenberg, metaphors are symptomatic of patterns of thought and feeling that escape conceptual formulation but are nonetheless indispensable, because they allow humans to orient themselves in an otherwise overwhelming world. The Readability of the World applies this method to the idea that the world presents itself as a book. The metaphor of the book of nature has been central to Western interpretations of reality, and Blumenberg traces the evolution of this metaphor from ancient Greek cosmology to the model of the genetic code to access the different expectations of reality that it articulates, reflects, and projects. Writing with equal authority on literature and science, theology and philosophy, ancient metaphysics and twentieth-century biochemistry, Blumenberg advances rich and original interpretations of the thinking of a range of canonical figures, including Berkeley, Vico, Goethe, Spinoza, Leibniz, Bacon, Flaubert, and Freud. Through his interdisciplinary, anthropologically sharpened gaze, Blumenberg uncovers a wealth of new insights into the continuities and discontinuities across human history of the longing to contain all of nature, history, and reality in a book, from the Bible, the Talmud, and the Qur'an to Diderot's Encyclopedia and Humboldt's Cosmos to the ACGT of the DNA code.
Author: Victor Grossman
Publisher:
Published: 2003
Total Pages: 354
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Faced with an accusation from the US Army's highest legal authority in 1952, Grossman left his unit stationed in Bavaria and swam the Danube to East Germany. He traces his childhood and experiences as a student, worker, and soldier; then describes life in his new home among a surprisingly large community of defectors. There is no index. Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).
Author: David Hackett Fischer
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2006-02-01
Total Pages: 576
ISBN-13: 0199756678
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Six months after the Declaration of Independence, the American Revolution was all but lost. A powerful British force had routed the Americans at New York, occupied three colonies, and advanced within sight of Philadelphia. Yet, as David Hackett Fischer recounts in this riveting history, George Washington--and many other Americans--refused to let the Revolution die. On Christmas night, as a howling nor'easter struck the Delaware Valley, he led his men across the river and attacked the exhausted Hessian garrison at Trenton, killing or capturing nearly a thousand men. A second battle of Trenton followed within days. The Americans held off a counterattack by Lord Cornwallis's best troops, then were almost trapped by the British force. Under cover of night, Washington's men stole behind the enemy and struck them again, defeating a brigade at Princeton. The British were badly shaken. In twelve weeks of winter fighting, their army suffered severe damage, their hold on New Jersey was broken, and their strategy was ruined. Fischer's richly textured narrative reveals the crucial role of contingency in these events. We see how the campaign unfolded in a sequence of difficult choices by many actors, from generals to civilians, on both sides. While British and German forces remained rigid and hierarchical, Americans evolved an open and flexible system that was fundamental to their success. The startling success of Washington and his compatriots not only saved the faltering American Revolution, but helped to give it new meaning.
Author: Heather H. Yeung
Publisher: Springer Nature
Published: 2020-05-15
Total Pages: 117
ISBN-13: 303044158X
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →On Literary Plasticity: Readings with Kafka in Ecology, Voice, and Object-Life calls to Franz Kafka, and in particular ‘Die Sorge des Hausvaters’, for aid in charting the long reach of plastic on the human mind and world. In this book, Heather H. Yeung builds a past and future ecology of plastic, arguing that it is through a deep reading of literature that we can begin to understand more clearly what it is that plastic means to us today, asking, under the auspices of the idea of literary plasticity: what are the true depths of our twenty-first-century fascination with plastic? How did we become so entangled? How can we come to a better understanding of plastic’s role in our imagination, our environment, and our lives? What can literature teach us in this respect? Why should we care?
Author: Ken Johnson
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Published: 2003-11-18
Total Pages: 506
ISBN-13: 9781931914147
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Students who often complain when faced with challenging word problems will be engaged as they acquire essential problem solving skills that are applicable beyond the math classroom. The authors of Crossing the River with Dogs: Problem Solving for College Students: - Use the popular approach of explaining strategies through dialogs from fictitious students - Present all the classic and numerous non-traditional problem solving strategies (from drawing diagrams to matrix logic, and finite differences) - Provide a text suitable for students in quantitative reasoning, developmental mathematics, mathematics education, and all courses in between - Challenge students with interesting, yet concise problem sets that include classic problems at the end of each chapter With Crossing the River with Dogs, students will enjoy reading their text and will take with them skills they will use for a lifetime.
Author: Richard Grant
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2011-10-25
Total Pages: 354
ISBN-13: 1439157642
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →From the acclaimed author of Dispatches From Pluto and Deepest South of All comes a rollicking travelogue from East Africa. NO ONE TRAVELS QUITE LIKE RICHARD GRANT and, really, no one should. In his last book, the adventure classic God’s Middle Finger, he narrowly escaped death in Mexico’s lawless Sierra Madre. Now, Grant has plunged with his trademark recklessness, wit, and curiosity into East Africa. Setting out to make the first descent of an unexplored river in Tanzania, he gets waylaid in Zanzibar by thieves, whores, and a charismatic former golf pro before crossing the Indian Ocean in a rickety cargo boat. And then the real adventure begins. Known to local tribes as “the river of bad spirits,” the Malagarasi River is a daunting adversary even with a heavily armed Tanzanian crew as travel companions. Dodging bullets, hippos, and crocodiles, Grant finally emerges in war-torn Burundi, where he befriends some ethnic street gangsters and trails a notorious man-eating crocodile known as Gustave. He concludes his journey by interviewing the dictatorial president of Rwanda and visiting the true source of the Nile. Gripping, illuminating, sometimes harrowing, often hilarious, Crazy River is a brilliantly rendered account of a modern-day exploration of Africa, and the unraveling of Grant’s peeled, battered mind as he tries to take it all in.
Author: Hans Blumenberg
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Published: 2015-04-23
Total Pages: 221
ISBN-13: 1623568536
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →An important work by 20-century philosopher Hans Blumenberg, here translated into English for the first time, The Laughter of the Thracian Woman describes the reception history of an anecdote best known from Plato's Theaetetus dialogue: while focused on observing the stars, the early astronomer and proto-philosopher Thales of Miletus fails to see a well directly in his path and tumbles down. A Thracian servant girl laughs, amused that he sought to understand what was above him when he was not mindful of what was right in front of him. Blumenberg sees the story as a highly sought substitute for our missing knowledge of the earliest historical events that would fit the label “theory.” By retelling the anecdote, philosophers reveal their distinctive values regarding absorption in curiosity, philosophy's past, and the demand that theorists abide by sanctioned methods and procedures. In this work and others, Blumenberg demonstrates that philosophers' most beloved images and anecdotes have become indispensable to philosophy as metaphors; that is, as representations whose meanings remain indefinite and invite frequent reinterpretation.
Author: Frances F. Dunwell
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2008-05-12
Total Pages: 402
ISBN-13: 0231136404
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Frances F. Dunwell presents a rich portrait of the Hudson and of the visionary people whose deep relationship with the river inspires changes in American history and culture. Lavishly illustrated with color plates of Hudson River School paintings, period engravings, and glass plate photography, The Hudson captures the spirit of the river through the eyes of its many admirers. It shows the crucial role of the Hudson in the shaping of Manhattan, the rise of the Empire State, and the trajectory of world trade and global politics, as well as the river's influence on art and architecture, engineering, and conservation.
