Philosophy

When worldviews clash, the world reverberates. Now a distinguished scholar who has written widely on thinkers ranging from Samuel Beckett to Eric Voegelin inquires into the sources of religious conflict - and into ways of being religious that might diminish that conflict."Worldview and Mind" covers a wide range of thinkers and movements to explore the relation between religion and modernity in all its complexity.

Awareness of mortality is the price of intelligent consciousness. This book argues that a person is essentially an immaterial subject of conscious states who, though intimately linked by causal ties to the body, is nevertheless distinct from it. The book also examines apparently paranormal occurrences supporting the belief that some persons have survived bodily death. Cases of near-death experiences, apparitions, reincarnation experiences and mediumship phenomena are presented and discussed.

Drawing on the work of Levinas and Derrida, "An Ethics of Betrayal" investigates the themes and tropes of betrayal and treason in Asian American and Chicano/Latino literary and cultural narratives. In this first major comparative study of narratives by and about Asian Americans and Latinos, Parikh considers writings by Frank Chin, Gish Jen, Chang-rae Lee, Eric Liu, Americo Parades, and Richard Rodriguez, as well as narratives about the persecution of Wen Ho Lee and the rescue and return of Elian Gonzalez.

In "The Crane's Walk", Jeremy Barris seeks to show that we can conceive and live with a pluralism of standpoints with conflicting standards for truth-with the truth of each being entirely unaffected by the truth of the others.The longest tradition of Plato scholarship identifies crucial faults in Plato's theory of Ideas. Barris argues that Plato deliberately displayed those faults, because he wanted to demonstrate that basic kinds of error or illogic have dimensions that are crucial to establishing truth.

This volume brings together international scholars working at the intersection of Spinoza studies and critical and feminist philosophy. It is the first book-length study dedicated to the re-reading of Spinoza's ethical and theologico-political works from a feminist perspective. The twelve outstanding chapters range over the entire field of Spinoza's writings - metaphysical, political, theological, ethical, and psychological - drawing out the ways in which his philosophy presents a rich resource for the reconceptualization of friendship, sexuality, politics, and ethics in contemporary life.