Nieuwe aanwinsten Geesteswetenschappen: okt - dec 2020

This book presents twenty chapters by experts in their fields, providing a thorough and interdisciplinary overview of the theory and practice of magic in the West. Its chronological scope extends from the Ancient Near East to twenty-first-century North America; its objects of analysis range from Persian curse tablets to US neo-paganism. For comparative purposes, the volume includes chapters on developments in the Jewish and Muslim worlds, evaluated not simply for what they contributed at various points to European notions of magic, but also as models of alternative development in ancient Mediterranean legacy. Similarly, the volume highlights the transformative and challenging encounters of Europeans with non-Europeans, regarding the practice of magic in both early modern colonization and more recent decolonization.

Anno 2018 laten veel Nederlanders zich inspireren door meer dan één religie. Zo'n kwart van de bevolking mixt en matcht elementen uit verschillende religies. De redenen hiervoor variëren: contacten met andersgelovigen, spirituele nieuwsgierigheid of gewoon interesse in zingevingsvragen; soms ook omdat ze iets missen in de religie waarin zij zijn grootgebracht, zich storen aan de daar heersende regels en dogma's, of zich belemmerd voelen in hun ontplooiing. Zij zijn religieuze ontdekkingsreizigers, die hun spirituele leven willen verdiepen, verruimen of transformeren. Ze komen aan het woord in dit boek, dat een resultaat is van onderzoek naar dit fenomeen van 'meervoudige religieuze betrokkenheid' aan de Vrije Universiteit in de afgelopen vijf jaar. Welke paden bewandelden deze flexibele gelovigen, en waar heeft hun ontdekkingsreis ze gebracht?

The invention of modern freedom - the equating of liberty with restraints on state power - was not the natural outcome of such secular Western trends as the growth of religious tolerance or the creation of market societies. Rather, it was propelled by an antidemocratic backlash following the Atlantic Revolutions. We tend to think of freedom as something that is best protected by carefully circumscribing the boundaries of legitimate state activity. But who came up with this understanding of freedom, and for what purposes? In a masterful and surprising reappraisal of more than two thousand years of thinking about freedom in the West, Annelien de Dijn argues that we owe our view of freedom not to the liberty lovers of the Age of Revolution but to the enemies of democracy. The conception of freedom most prevalent today - that it depends on the limitation of state power- is a deliberate and dramatic rupture with long-established ways of thinking about liberty. For centuries people in the West identified freedom not with being left alone by the state but with the ability to exercise control over the way in which they were governed.

A significant event in Derrida scholarship, this book marks the first publication of his long-lost philosophical text known only as "Geschlecht III." The third, and arguably the most significant, piece in his four-part Geschlecht series, it fills a gap that has perplexed Derrida scholars. The series centers on Martin Heidegger and the enigmatic German word Geschlecht, which has several meanings pointing to race, sex, and lineage. Throughout the series, Derrida engages with Heidegger's controversial oeuvre to tease out topics of sexual difference, nationalism, race, and humanity. In Geschlecht III, he calls attention to Heidegger's problematic nationalism, his work's political and sexual themes, and his promise of salvation through the coming of the "One Geschlecht," a sentiment that Derrida found concerningly close to the racial ideology of the Nazi party. Amid new revelations about Heidegger's anti-Semitism and the contemporary context of nationalist resurgence, this third piece of the Geschlecht series is timelier and more necessary than ever. Meticulously edited and expertly translated, this volume brings Derrida's mysterious and much awaited text to light.  

The T & T Clark Handbook of Christian Theology and Climate Change entails a wide-ranging conversation between Christian theology and various other discourses on climate change. Given the far-reaching complicity of "North Atlantic Christianity" in anthropogenic climate change, the question is whether it can still collaborate with and contribute to ongoing mitigation and adaptation efforts. The main essays in this volume are written by leading scholars from within North Atlantic Christianity and addressed primarily to readers in the same context; these essays are critically engaged by respondents situated in other geographic regions, minority communities, non-Christian traditions, or non-theological disciplines. Structured in seven main parts, the handbook explores: 1) the need for collaboration with disciplines outside of Christian theology to address climate change; 2) the need to find common moral ground for such collaboration; 3) the difficulties posed by collaborating with other Christian traditions from within; 4) the questions that emerge from such collaboration for understanding the story of God's work; and 5) God's identity and character; 6) the implications of such collaboration for ecclesial praxis; and 7) concluding reflections examining whether this volume does justice to issues of race, gender, class, other animals, religious diversity, geographical divides and carbon mitigation.

"Anton Wilhelm Amo (c. 1703 - after 1752) is the first modern African philosopher to study and teach in a European university and write in the European philosophical tradition. We give an extensive historical and philosophical introduction to Amo's life and work, and provide Latin texts, with facing translations and explanatory notes, of Amo's two philosophical dissertations, On the Impassivity of the Human Mind and the Philosophical Disputation containing a Distinct Idea of those Things that Pertain either to the Mind or to our Living and Organic Body, both published in 1734. The Impassivity is an extended argument that the mind cannot be acted on, that sensation is a being-acted-on by the sensed object, and therefore that sensation does not belong to the mind, and must belong instead to the body The Distinct Idea works out the implications for the mind's actions, and tries to show how the mind understands, wills, and effects things through the body by 'intentions' which direct motions in our body intentionally toward external things. Both dissertations try to show how far each type of human act belongs to the mind, how far to the body, and expose and resolve earlier philosophers' self-contradictions on these questions"

We spend much of our days talking. Yet we know little about the conversational engine that drives our everyday lives. We are pushed and pulled around by language far more than we realize, yet are seduced by stereotypes and myths about communication. This book will change the way you think about talk. It will explain the big pay-offs to understanding conversation scientifically. Elizabeth Stokoe, a social psychologist, has spent over twenty years collecting and analysing real conversations across settings as varied as first dates, crisis negotiation, sales encounters and medical communication. This book describes some of the findings of her own research, and that of other conversation analysts around the world. Through numerous examples from real interactions between friends, partners, colleagues, police officers, mediators, doctors and many others, you will learn that some of what you think you know about talk is wrong. But you will also uncover fresh insights about how to have better conversations - using the evidence from fifty years of research about the science of talk.

Fantasy in Greek and Roman Literature offers an overview of Greek and Roman excursions into fantasy, including imaginary voyages, dream-worlds, talking animals and similar impossibilities. This is a territory seldom explored and extends to rarely read texts such as the Aesop Romance, The Battle of the Frogs and the Mice, and The Pumpkinification of the Emperor Claudius. 　 Bringing this diverse material together for the first time, Anderson widens readers' perspectives on the realm of fantasy in ancient literature, including topics such as dialogues with the dead, Utopian communities and fantastic feasts. Going beyond the more familiar world of myth, his examples range from The Golden Ass to the Late Antique Testament of a Pig. The volume also explores ancient resistance to the world of make-believe. Fantasy in Greek and Roman Literature is an invaluable resource not only for students of classical and comparative literature, but also for modern writers on fantasy who want to explore the genre's origins in antiquity, both in the more obvious and in lesser-known texts.

This bookraises awareness of Eurocentrism's enormous impact and shows how, over the course of five centuries, Eurocentrism has extended its power across the globe. In the twenty-first century, Eurocentrism's hegemony remains powerful. By exploring a wide range of sources including Eurocentric maps and images, historiography, and Rudyard Kipling's White Man's Burden, Wintle uncovers Eurocentrism's gradual evolution and reveals the ways in which it functions at both seen and unseen levels. Taking a thematic and then empirical approach, Eurocentrism offers a detailed and comprehensive discussion of Eurocentrism's problems and dangers, pays special attention to the work of Samir Amin and James Blaut and applies notions garnered in the book to discuss Eurocentrism within the context of the twenty-first-century European Union. This study questions Eurocentrism's function, its history, and its importance, providing a fresh insight into one of the world's most complex and powerful cultural phenomena. With its multi- and interdisciplinary analysis, this book is an indispensable tool for both scholars and students concerned with modern history, politics, visual culture and political geography.

Hét verhaal over Mark Rutte, hoe hij werd tot wie hij is. In 2006 won Mark Rutte de lijsttrekkersstrijd van de VVD maar nét van Rita Verdonk. In de partij bleven er daarna zoveel twijfels over hem dat hij in 2009 bijna door het hoofdbestuur naar huis werd gestuurd en in 2010 ook niet de officiële premierskandidaat mocht zijn van de VVD. Tien jaar later lijkt zijn positie onaantastbaar, en niet alleen in de VVD. In Mark Rutte laat NRC-journalist Petra de Koning zien wat hem maakte tot wie hij is, hoe zijn manier van denken en doen zich ontwikkelde. En misschien ook wel vooral al die jaren hetzelfde bleef. Hoe kan het dat iemand die bekend kwam te staan als politicus-zonder-opvattingen, die met rechts en links regeerde, een rij van verkiezingsbeloften verbrak en grote politieke inschattingsfouten maakte, volgens opinieonderzoek in 2020 wordt gezien als de beste naoorlogse minister-president van Nederland? Mark Rutte gaat over een politiek leider die als scholier en student al op zoek was naar een rol voor zichzelf in de geschiedenis. Het is het verhaal dat mensen van dichtbij met hem meemaakten, op school en thuis, in de JOVD, op het Binnenhof, in Europa.

From the acclaimed author of Blue, a beautifully illustrated history of yellow from antiquity to the present In this richly illustrated book, Michel Pastoureau--a renowned authority on the history of color and the author of celebrated volumes on blue, black, green, and red--now traces the visual, social, and cultural history of yellow. Focusing on European societies, with comparisons from East Asia, India, Africa, and South America, Yellow tells the intriguing story of the color's evolving place in art, religion, fashion, literature, and science. In Europe today, yellow is a discreet color, little present in everyday life and rarely carrying great symbolism. This has not always been the case. In antiquity, yellow was almost sacred, a symbol of light, warmth, and prosperity. It became highly ambivalent in medieval Europe: greenish yellow came to signify demonic sulfur and bile, the color of forgers, lawless knights, Judas, and Lucifer--while warm yellow recalled honey and gold, serving as a sign of pleasure and abundance. In Asia, yellow has generally had a positive meaning. In ancient China, yellow clothing was reserved for the emperor, while in India the color is associated with happiness. Above all, yellow is the color of Buddhism, whose temple doors are marked with it. Throughout, Pastoureau illuminates the history of yellow with a wealth of captivating images. With its striking design and compelling text, Yellow is a feast for the eye and mind.

"A dauntingly ambitious, obsessively researched" (Los Angeles Times) global history of music that reveals how songs have shifted societies and sparked revolutions Histories of music overwhelmingly suppress stories of the outsiders and rebels who created musical revolutions and instead celebrate the mainstream assimilators who borrowed innovations, diluted their impact, and disguised their sources. In Music: A Subversive History, Ted Gioia reclaims the story of music for the riffraff, insurgents, and provocateurs. Gioia tells a four-thousand-year history of music as a global source of power, change, and upheaval. He shows how outcasts, immigrants, slaves, and others at the margins of society have repeatedly served as trailblazers of musical expression, reinventing our most cherished songs from ancient times all the way to the jazz, reggae, and hip-hop sounds of the current day. Music: A Subversive History is essential reading for anyone interested in the meaning of music, from Sappho to the Sex Pistols to Spotify.