Félix Ravaisson's seminal philosophical essay, Of Habit, was first published in French in 1838. It traces the origins and development of habit and proposes the principle of habit as the foundation of human nature. This metaphysics of habit steers a path between materialism and idealism in one of the best and most sophisticated treatments of the topic. Ravaisson's work was pivotal in the development of European thought and has had a significant influence on such key thinkers such a...

Written when Maine de Biran was coming into his philosophical maturity, in 1807, 'Of Immediate Apperception' was the first complete statement of his own philosophy of the will. It was the winning entry to a competition organised by the Berlin Académie des Sciences et Belles-Lettres on the subject of self-awareness and of the possibility of an 'immediate apperception' of the self. It contains the core of Biran's philosophy of effort, as it is developed in dialogue with the traditio...

This reader makes the key essays of 19th century French philosopher Félix Ravaisson available in English for the first time. In recent years, Ravaisson has emerged as an extremely important and influential figure in the history of modern European philosophy. The volume contains the classic 1838 dissertation Of Habit, studies of Pascal, Stoicism and the wider history of philosophy together with the Philosophical Testament that he left unfinished when he died in 1900. The v...

"What is love? May plunders Western poetry, philosophy and psychology to find answers . . . Thought-provoking stuff" ( The Sunday Telegraph).Love—unconditional, selfless, unchanging, sincere, and totally accepting—is worshipped today as the West's only universal religion. To challenge it is one of our few remaining taboos. In this path-breaking and superbly written book, philosopher Simon May does just that, dissecting our ideas of love and showing how the...

Revised EditionOne of Cardinal Ratzinger's most important and widely read books, this volume is a revised second edition with an improved translation and an in-depth 20 page preface by the Cardinal. As he states in the preface, since this book was first published over 30 years ago, many changes and significant events have occurred in the world, and in the Church. But even so, he says he is firmly convinced that his fundamental approach in this book is still very ti...

In this classic treatise on Christian spirituality, Rowan Williams takes us with a new eye along a road marked out by Paul, John, Ignatius, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Athanasius, Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine, and finally to Luther and St. John of the Cross. The Wound of Knowledge is a penetrating psychological and intellectual analysis of Christian spirituality from one of the finest theological minds of our day.

An investigation of the symbolism of the selfAion, originally published in German in 1951, is one of the major works of Jung’s later years. The central theme of the volume is the symbolic representation of the psychic totality through the concept of the Self, whose traditional historical equivalent is the figure of Christ. Jung demonstrates his thesis by an investigation of the Allegoria Christi, especially the fish symbol, but also of Gnostic and...

Why has power in the West assumed the form of an "economy," that is, of a government of men and things? If power is essentially government, why does it need glory, that is, the ceremonial and liturgical apparatus that has always accompanied it?In the early centuries of the Church, in order to reconcile monotheism with God's threefold nature, the doctrine of Trinity was introduced in the guise of an economy of divine life. It was as if the Trinity amounted to nothing more than a pro...

The Message of the Alien God and the Beginnings of Christianity

David Bentley Hart offers an intense and thorough reflection upon the issue of the supernatural in Christian theology and doctrine.In recent years, the theological—and, more specifically, Roman Catholic—question of the supernatural has made an astonishing return from seeming oblivion. David Bentley Hart’s You Are Gods presents a series of meditations on the vexed theological question of the relation of nature and supernature. In its merely controversial as...

C. G. Jung, son of a Swiss Reformed pastor, used his Christian background throughout his career to illuminate the psychological roots of all religions. Jung believed religion was a profound, psychological response to the unknown--both the inner self and the outer worlds--and he understood Christianity to be a profound meditation on the meaning of the life of Jesus of Nazareth within the context of Hebrew spirituality and the Biblical worldview.Murray Stein's introduction relates Ju...

An inspired and impassioned historical examination of humanity's search for the divineFrom Plato to Wittgenstein and religions from Judaism to the Hindu tradition, interspersed with divine influences from Classical Greece, Romantic poetry, and the occasional scene from 'Alien', ‘God: A Guide for the Perplexed’ charts the path of humanity's great spiritual odyssey: the search for God.Leading the way through this minefield is acclaimed philosopher-theologian ...