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The Propensity Of Things
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Book Synopsis The Propensity of Things by : Francois Jullien
Download or read book The Propensity of Things written by Francois Jullien and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 1995-11 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, his first to appear in English, French sinologist François Jullien uses the Chinese concept of shi--meaning disposition or circumstance, power or potential--as a touchstone to explore Chinese culture and to uncover the intricate structure underlying Chinese modes of thinking.
Book Synopsis A Treatise on Efficacy by : François Jullien
Download or read book A Treatise on Efficacy written by François Jullien and published by . This book was released on 2004-04-30 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this highly insightful analysis of Western and Chinese concepts of efficacy, François Jullien subtly delves into the metaphysical preconceptions of the two civilizations to account for diverging patterns of action in warfare, politics, and diplomacy. He shows how Western and Chinese strategies work in several domains (the battlefield, for example) and analyzes two resulting acts of war. The Chinese strategist manipulates his own troops and the enemy to win a battle without waging war and to bring about victory effortlessly. Efficacity in China is thus conceived of in terms of transformation (as opposed to action) and manipulation, making it closer to what is understood as efficacy in the West. Jullien’s brilliant interpretations of an array of recondite texts are key to understanding our own conceptions of action, time, and reality in this foray into the world of Chinese thought. In its clear and penetrating characterization of two contrasting views of reality from a heretofore unexplored perspective, A Treatise on Efficacy will be of central importance in the intellectual debate between East and West.
Book Synopsis Vital Nourishment by : François Jullien
Download or read book Vital Nourishment written by François Jullien and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2024-09-10 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A philosophical inquiry into how to "feed life," or nourish it, draws from early Chinese thinker Zhuanghi to explore notions of breath, energy, and immanence.
Book Synopsis In Praise of Blandness by : François Jullien
Download or read book In Praise of Blandness written by François Jullien and published by Zone Books (NY). This book was released on 2007 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A consideration of blandness not as the absence of defining qualities but as the harmonious union of all potential values--an infinite opening into human experience.
Book Synopsis The Great Image Has No Form, Or On the Nonobject Through Painting by : François Jullien
Download or read book The Great Image Has No Form, Or On the Nonobject Through Painting written by François Jullien and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In premodern China, painters used imagery not to mirror the world, but to evoke unfathomable experience. Considering this art alongside the philosophical traditions that inform it, this book explores the 'nonobject', a notion exemplified by paintings that do not seek to represent observable surroundings.
Download or read book Unapologetic written by Francis Spufford and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2013-10-15 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Francis Spufford's Unapologetic is a wonderfully pugnacious defense of Christianity. Refuting critics such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and the "new atheist" crowd, Spufford, a former atheist and Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, argues that Christianity is recognizable, drawing on the deep and deeply ordinary vocabulary of human feeling, satisfying those who believe in it by offering a ruthlessly realistic account of the grown-up dignity of Christian experience. Fans of C. S. Lewis, N. T. Wright, Marilynne Robinson, Mary Karr, Diana Butler Bass, Rob Bell, and James Martin will appreciate Spufford's crisp, lively, and abashedly defiant thesis. Unapologetic is a book for believers who are fed up with being patronized, for non-believers curious about how faith can possibly work in the twenty-first century, and for anyone who feels there is something indefinably wrong, literalistic, anti-imaginative and intolerant about the way the atheist case is now being made.
Book Synopsis Rich People Things by : Chris Lehmann
Download or read book Rich People Things written by Chris Lehmann and published by Haymarket Books. This book was released on 2011 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Social criticism at its scorching-hot best."--Barbara Ehrenreich "Think H.L. Mencken crossed with Jon Stewart."--The Phoenix In Rich People Things, Chris Lehmann lays bare the various dogmas and delusions that prop up plutocratic rule in the post-meltdown age. It's a humorous and harrowing tale of warped populism, phony reform, and blind deference to the nation's financial elite. As the author explains, American class privilege is very much like the idea of sex in a Catholic school--it's not supposed to exist in the first place, but once it presents itself in your mind's eye, you realize that it's everywhere. A concise and easy-to-use guide, Rich People Things catalogs the fortifications that shelter the opulent from the resentments of the hoi polloi. From ideological stanchions such as the Free Market through the castellation of media including The New York Times and Wired magazine, to gatekeepers such as David Brooks, Steve Forbes, and Alan Greenspan, Lehmann covers the vast array of comforting and comprehensive protections that allow the über-privileged to maintain their iron grip on almost half of America's wealth. With chapters on Malcolm Gladwell, the Supreme Court, the memoir, and more, no one is spared from Lehmann's pointed prose. Chris Lehmann is employed, ever precariously, as an editor for Yahoo! News, Bookforum, and The Baffler, while dissecting the excesses of his social betters for his column Rich People Things at TheAwl.com. He lives in Washington, DC, with his wife Ana Marie Cox and a quartet of excellent pets.
Book Synopsis Time for Things by : Stephen D. Rosenberg
Download or read book Time for Things written by Stephen D. Rosenberg and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2021-01-12 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modern life is full of stuff yet bereft of time. An economic sociologist offers an ingenious explanation for why, over the past seventy-five years, Americans have come to prefer consumption to leisure. Productivity has increased steadily since the mid-twentieth century, yet Americans today work roughly as much as they did then: forty hours per week. We have witnessed, during this same period, relentless growth in consumption. This pattern represents a striking departure from the preceding century, when working hours fell precipitously. It also contradicts standard economic theory, which tells us that increasing consumption yields diminishing marginal utility, and empirical research, which shows that work is a significant source of discontent. So why do we continue to trade our time for more stuff? Time for Things offers a novel explanation for this puzzle. Stephen Rosenberg argues that, during the twentieth century, workers began to construe consumer goods as stores of potential free time to rationalize the exchange of their labor for a wage. For example, when a worker exchanges his labor for an automobile, he acquires a duration of free activity that can be held in reserve, counterbalancing the unfree activity represented by work. This understanding of commodities as repositories of hypothetical utility was made possible, Rosenberg suggests, by the advent of durable consumer goods—cars, washing machines, refrigerators—as well as warranties, brands, chain stores, and product-testing magazines, which assured workers that the goods they purchased would not be subject to rapid obsolescence. This theory clarifies perplexing aspects of behavior under industrial capitalism—the urgency to spend earnings on things, the preference to own rather than rent consumer goods—as well as a variety of historical developments, including the coincident rise of mass consumption and the legitimation of wage labor.
Book Synopsis The Illusion of Conscious Will by : Daniel M. Wegner
Download or read book The Illusion of Conscious Will written by Daniel M. Wegner and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2003-08-11 with total page 725 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A novel contribution to the age-old debate about free will versus determinism. Do we consciously cause our actions, or do they happen to us? Philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists, theologians, and lawyers have long debated the existence of free will versus determinism. In this book Daniel Wegner offers a novel understanding of the issue. Like actions, he argues, the feeling of conscious will is created by the mind and brain. Yet if psychological and neural mechanisms are responsible for all human behavior, how could we have conscious will? The feeling of conscious will, Wegner shows, helps us to appreciate and remember our authorship of the things our minds and bodies do. Yes, we feel that we consciously will our actions, Wegner says, but at the same time, our actions happen to us. Although conscious will is an illusion, it serves as a guide to understanding ourselves and to developing a sense of responsibility and morality. Approaching conscious will as a topic of psychological study, Wegner examines the issue from a variety of angles. He looks at illusions of the will—those cases where people feel that they are willing an act that they are not doing or, conversely, are not willing an act that they in fact are doing. He explores conscious will in hypnosis, Ouija board spelling, automatic writing, and facilitated communication, as well as in such phenomena as spirit possession, dissociative identity disorder, and trance channeling. The result is a book that sidesteps endless debates to focus, more fruitfully, on the impact on our lives of the illusion of conscious will.
Book Synopsis Significant Objects by : Joshua Glenn
Download or read book Significant Objects written by Joshua Glenn and published by Fantagraphics Books. This book was released on 2012-08-06 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 100 EXTRAORDINARY STORIES ABOUT ORDINARY THINGS SIGNIFICANT OBJECTS: A Literary and Economic Experiment Can a great story transform a worthless trinket into a significant object? The Significant Objects project set out to answer that question once and for all, by recruiting a highly impressive crew of creative writers to invent stories about an unimpressive menagerie of items rescued from thrift stores and yard sales. That secondhand flotsam definitely becomes more valuable: sold on eBay, objects originally picked up for a buck or so sold for thousands of dollars in total — making the project a sensation in the literary blogosphere along the way. But something else happened, too: The stories created were astonishing, a cavalcade of surprising responses to the challenge of manufacturing significance. Who would have believed that random junk could inspire so much imagination? The founders of the Significant Objects project, that’s who. This book collects 100 of the finest tales from this unprecedented creative experiment; you’ll never look at a thrift-store curiosity the same way again. FEATURING ORIGINAL STORIES BY: Chris Adrian • Rob Agredo • Kurt Andersen • Rachel Axler • Rob Baedeker • Nicholson Baker • Rosecrans Baldwin • Matthew Battles • Charles Baxter • Kate Bernheimer • Susanna Breslin • Kevin Brockmeier • Matt Brown • Blake Butler • Meg Cabot • Tim Carvell • Patrick Cates • Dan Chaon • Susanna Daniel • Adam Davies • Kathryn Davis • Matthew De Abaitua • Stacey • D'Erasmo • Helen DeWitt • Doug Dorst • Mark Doty • Ben Ehrenreich • Mark Frauenfelder • Amy Fusselman • William Gibson • Myla Goldberg • Ben Greenman • Jason Grote • Jim Hanas • Jennifer Michael Hecht • Sheila Heti • Christine Hill • Dara Horn • Shelley Jackson • Heidi Julavits • Ben Katchor • Matt Klam • Wayne Koestenbaum • Josh Kramer • Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer • Neil LaBute • Victor LaValle • J. Robert Lennon • Jonathan Lethem • Todd Levin • Laura Lippman • Mimi Lipson • Robert Lopez • Joe Lyons • Sarah Manguso • Merrill Markoe • Tom McCarthy • Miranda Mellis • Lydia Millet • Maud Newton • Annie Nocenti • Stephen O’Connor • Stewart O’Nan • Jenny Offill • Gary Panter • Ed Park • James Parker • Benjamin Percy • Mark Jude Poirier • Padgett Powell • Bob Powers • Todd Pruzan • Dan Reines • Nathaniel Rich • Peter Rock • Lucinda Rosenfeld • Greg Rowland • Luc Sante • R.K. Scher • Toni Schlesinger • Matthew Sharpe • Jim Shepard • David Shields • Marisa Silver • Curtis Sittenfeld • Bruce Sterling • Scarlett Thomas • Jeff Turrentine • Deb Olin Unferth • Tom Vanderbilt • Matthew J. Wells • Joe Wenderoth • Margaret Wertheim • Colleen Werthmann • Colson Whitehead • Carl Wilson • Cintra Wilson • Sari Wilson • Douglas Wolk • John Wray
Download or read book Made to Break written by Giles Slade and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Made to Break is a history of twentieth-century technology as seen through the prism of obsolescence. Giles Slade explains how disposability was a necessary condition for America's rejection of tradition and our acceptance of change and impermanence. This book gives us a detailed and harrowing picture of how, by choosing to support ever-shorter product lives, we may well be shortening the future of our way of life as well.
Download or read book Lies That Bind written by Susan D. Blum and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2007-01-10 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This provocative book explores the ideology of truth and deception in China, offering a nuanced perspective on social interaction in different cultural settings. Drawing on decades of fieldwork in China, Susan D. Blum offers an authoritative examination of rules, expectations, and beliefs regarding lying and honesty in society. Blum points to a propensity for deception in Chinese public interactions in situations where people in the United States would expect truthfulness, yet argues that lying is evaluated within Chinese society by moral standards different from those of Americans. Chinese, for example, might emphasize the consequences of speech, Americans the absolute truthfulness. Blum considers the longstanding values that led to this style of interaction, as well as more recent factors, such as the government's control over expression. But Chinese society is not alone in the practice of such customs. The author observes that many Americans also excel in manipulation of language, yet find a simultaneous moral absolutism opposed to lying in any form. She also considers other traditions, including Japanese and Jewish, that struggle to control the boundaries of lying, balancing human needs with moral values in contrasting ways. Deception and lying, the book concludes, are distinctively cultural yet universal—inseparable from what it is to be a human being equipped with language in all its subtlety.
Book Synopsis Detour and Access by : François Jullien
Download or read book Detour and Access written by François Jullien and published by Mit Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exploration of the central role of indirect modes of expression in ancient China. In what way do we benefit from speaking of things indirectly? How does such a distancing allow us better to discover--and describe--people and objects? How does distancing produce an effect? What can we gain from approaching the world obliquely? In other words, how does detour grant access? Thus begins Francois Jullien's investigation into the strategy, subtlety, and production of meaning in ancient and modern Chinese aesthetic and political texts and events. Moving between the rhetorical traditions of ancient Greece and China, Jullien does not attempt a simple comparison of the two civilizations. Instead, he uses the perspective provided by each to gain access into a culture considered by many Westerners to be strange--"It's all Chinese to me"--and whose strangeness has been eclipsed through the assumption of its familiarity. He also uses the comparison to shed light on the role of Greek thinking in Western civilization. Jullien rereads the major texts of Chinese thought--The Book of Songs, Confucius's Analects, and the work of Mencius and Lao-Tse. He addresses the question of oblique, indirect, and allusive meaning in order to explore how the techniques of detour provide access to subtler meanings than are attainable through direct approaches. Indirect speech, Jullien concludes, yields a complex mode of indication, open to multiple perspectives and variations, infinitely adaptable to particular situations and contexts. Concentrating on that which is not said, or which is spoken only through other means, Jullien traces the benefits and costs of this rhetorical strategy in which absolute truth is absent.
Download or read book Killing Calvinism written by Greg Dutcher and published by Cruciform Press. This book was released on 2012-06 with total page 74 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are we actually living the message of grace? "When a corrective like this comes from within a movement, it is a sign of health" -John Piper Something wonderful is happening in Western Evangelicalism. A resurgence of Calvinism is changing lives, transforming churches, and spreading the gospel. The books are great, the sermons are life-changing, the music is inspirational, and the conferences are astonishing. Will this continue or will we, who are part of it all, end up destroying it? That depends on how we live the message. As "insiders" of the Calvinist resurgence, there are at least eight ways we can mess everything up. Learn what they are and how to avoid killing off a perfectly good theology.
Book Synopsis The Twenty-Seventh City by : Jonathan Franzen
Download or read book The Twenty-Seventh City written by Jonathan Franzen and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 1988-09 with total page 531 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: St. Louis is embroiled in a political conspiracy after Jammu, a young woman from India, is installed as its new police chief. To succeed she realizes that respected businessman Martin Probst must be seduced or destroyed.
Book Synopsis Practically Radical by : William C. Taylor
Download or read book Practically Radical written by William C. Taylor and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2011-01-04 with total page 429 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The most powerful and instructive change manual you’ll ever read. It will persuade and inspire you to change your business, your work, and maybe your life.” —Daniel H. Pink, bestselling author of A Whole New Mind In Practically Radical, William C. Taylor, the New York Times bestselling co-author of Mavericks at Work offers a refreshing, rigorous new look at pragmatic ways to shake things up and make positive change in difficult times. Exploring how twenty-five for-profit companies and nonprofit organizations—including IBM, Zappos, Swatch, the Girl Scouts, and Interpol—made remarkable strides in tough circumstances, Practically Radical raises (and answers) the make-or-break questions facing today's leaders in every field: Do you see opportunities the competition doesn't see? The most successful organizations embrace one-of-a-kind ideas in a world filled with "me-too" thinking. Do you have new ideas about where to look for new ideas? Routine practices in one field can be revolutionary when they migrate to another. Are you the most of anything? In business today, the middle of the road is the road to ruin. Are you getting the best contributions from the most people? Change is not a game best played by loners. Anything but your typical business book, Practically Radical is a must-own for small business owners and CEOs, for managers at all levels, and innovators and entrepreneurs of every stripe.
Book Synopsis America the Ingenious by : Kevin Baker
Download or read book America the Ingenious written by Kevin Baker and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2016-10-04 with total page 554 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Among the many rewards of America the Ingenious, Kevin Baker’s survey of Yankee know-how, is stumbling on its buried nuggets. . . . Baker examines a wide range of the achievements that have made, and still make, America great again—and again.” —The Wall Street Journal All made in America: The skyscraper and subway car. The telephone and telegraph. The safety elevator and safety pin. Plus the microprocessor, amusement park, MRI, supermarket, Pennsylvania rifle, and Tennessee Valley Authority. Not to mention the city of Chicago or jazz or that magnificent Golden Gate Bridge. What is it about America that makes it a nation of inventors, tinkerers, researchers, and adventurers—obsessive pursuers of the never-before-created? And, equally, what is it that makes America such a fertile place to explore, discover, and launch the next big thing? In America the Ingenious, bestselling author Kevin Baker brings his gift of storytelling and eye for historical detail to the grand, and grandly entertaining, tale of American innovation. Here are the Edisons and Bells and Carnegies, and the stories of how they followed their passions and changed our world. And also the less celebrated, like Jacob Youphes and Loeb Strauss, two Jewish immigrants from Germany who transformed the way at least half the world now dresses (hint: Levi Strauss). And Leo Fender, who couldn’t play a note of music, midwifing rock ’n’ roll through his solid-body electric guitar and amplifier. And the many women who weren’t legally recognized as inventors, but who created things to make their lives easier that we use every day—like Josephine Cochran, inventor of the dishwasher, or Marion O’Brien Donovan, who invented a waterproof diaper cover. Or a guy with the improbable name of Philo Farnsworth, who, with his invention of television, upended communication as significantly as Gutenberg did. At a time when America struggles with different visions of what it wants to be, America the Ingenious shows the extraordinary power of what works: how immigration leads to innovation, what a strong government and strong public education mean to a climate of positive practical change, and why taking the long view instead of looking for short-term gain pays off many times over, not only for investors and inventors, but for the rest of us whose lives are made better by the new. America and its nation of immigrants have excelled at taking ideas from anywhere and transforming them into the startling, often unexpectedly beautiful creations that have shaped our world. This is that story.
