Is jealousy eliminable? If so, at what cost? What are the connections between pride the sin and the pride insisted on by identity politics? How can one question an individual's understanding of their own happiness or override a society's account of its own rituals? What makes a sexual desire "perverse," or particular sexual relations (such as incestuous ones) undesirable or even unthinkable? These and other questions about what sustains and threatens our identity are pursued using the resources of philosophy, psychoanalysis, and other disciplines. The discussion throughout is informed and motivated by the Spinozist hope that understanding our lives can help change them, can help make us more free.
Added by: Kyla | Karma: 209.07 | Periodicals | 5 February 2009
16
Point of View. Each of us has a rich inner mental life, one that seems inaccessible to everyone else. To others, we believe, we represent a kind of human terra incognita. After all, how can anybody really know what is on our mind? As it turns out, however, our feelings and thoughts are only too visible to those who know how to look. You will learn why in our special report, “The Body Speaks.” Tiny “microexpressions” involuntarily fl it across our face, revealing our emotions, as Siri Schubert explains in “A Look Tells All,” starting on page 26. In “Gestures Offer Insight,” beginning on page 20, Ipke Wachsmuth describes how we make hand or other motions to add shades of meaning to words as we converse. And when we fi b, our very physiology can give us away, Thomas Metzinger details in “Exposing Lies”; go to page 32. Getting an outside vantage point also helps us fi nd other things that can seem hidden or unavailable: novel ideas. Basic knowledge of a given fi eld helps, of course, in the quest for a problem’s solution. But simply proceeding step-by-step like a computer will get you only so far. To summon those priceless flashes of insight takes a new point of view.
Edited by: Kyla - 28 October 2009
Reason: picture thumbnailed and added to "Picture URL" - Pumukl
Here are the answers to questions that have been keeping you and your loved ones up nights, questions that have driven families to feuds, questions that nag and nag just won't let go. Have you ever wondered juts what purpose those warning labels on mattresses are supposed to serve? Or what happens to the trend that wears off tires? And how many meals have you spent pondering the perennially baffling question of why hot dogs come ten to a package while hot dog buns come in eight?
Why Do Clocks Run Clockwise? has the solutions to these and scores of other Imponderables. David Feldman's witty and irresistible compendium of knowledge goes where other reference books fear to trend, uncovering closely guarded secrets, revealing long-hidden facts, and, like all other invaluable works of detection, never letting well enough alone. Whether you want to settle those arguments about the difference between a kit and a caboodle, or just curious about dry cleaning, Teflon, Wayne Gretzky, or chocolate bunnies, Why Do Clocks Run Clockwise? is indispensable.
When the unconventional Durrell family can no longer endure the damp, gray English climate, they do what any sensible family would do: sell their house and relocate to the sunny Greek isle of Corfu. My Family and Other Animals was intended to embrace the natural history of the island but ended up as a delightful account of Durrell’s family’s experiences, from the many eccentric hangers-on to the ceaseless procession of puppies, toads, scorpions, geckoes, ladybugs, glowworms, octopuses, bats, and butterflies into their home.
