The Lost Science of Synchrony is the Lankavatara Sutra’s thesis. An ancient text, based on an outlawed teaching, gathered from the ruins of an obliterated dynasty, it is heretical and revolutionary concerning doctrine and religion. Hidden away as an esoteric treasure for 1600 years, the single translation from Sanskrit to English required computer analysis to understand. This book minimizes the esoteric and explains the limitations and challenges of human potential, its relevance is life changing. The ancients gave us a basis to understand who we are and how to go beyond our animal limitations, into a wellbeing beyond our wildest dreams. This challenging book reveals a whole new paradigm beyond imagination and discrimination. Like Everest it’s not for the faint hearted, but man what a view. Effortless belonging is the greatest desire of sentient awareness and the pinnacle of consciousness, driven by destiny and nature, as something we are called to experience. In this book, a vocabulary and basis to understand our authentic nature is revealed in a spiraling staircase of logic without esoteric obscurity. It’s as simple as the pause between thoughts and as profound as a surprise, which keeps you awake at night.

This collection of essays brings together moral, social and political philosophers from Britain, Canada, New Zealand and the United States who explore a wide range of issues under the three headings of Philosophy, Society and Culture; Ethics, Economics and Justice; and Rights, Law and Punishment. The topics discussed range from the public responsibility of intellectuals to the justice of military tribunals, and from posthumous reproduction to the death penalty.

College Belonging reveals how colleges’ and universities’ efforts to foster a sense of belonging in their students are misguided. Colleges bombard new students with the message to “get out there!” and “find your place” by joining student organizations, sports teams, clubs and the like. Nunn shows that this reflects a flawed understanding of what belonging is and how it works. Drawing on the sociological theories of Emile Durkheim, College Belonging shows that belonging is something that members of a community offer to each other. It is something that must be given, like a gift. Individuals cannot simply walk up to a group or community and demand belonging. That’s not how it works. The group must extend a sense of belonging to each and every member. It happens by making a person feel welcome, to feel that their presence matters to the group, that they would be missed if they were gone. This critical insight helps us understand why colleges' push for students simply to “get out there!” does not always work.

Peter Leonard provides an accessible analysis of debates about the crisis of the welfare state under the contemporary conditions of postmodern scepticism and the triumphs of global market capitalism. In the last two decades Western governments have sought to replace the post-war welfare compact with neo-conservative individualism. The prospects for the Left look bleak. At the same time, postmodern critique raises profound questions about the validity of a mass politics of emancipation based on the universal values of justice, reason and progress. From a critical perspective founded in Marxism and feminism, Leonard uses elements of postmodern deconstruction to consider how we might now re-think the present and future of welf

Is There a Canadian Philosophy? addresses the themes of community, culture, national identity, and universal human rights, taking the Canadian example as its focus. The authors argue that nations compelled to cope with increasing demands for group recognition may do so in a broadly liberal spirit and without succumbing to the dangers associated with an illiberal, adversarial multiculturalism. They identify and describe a Canadian civic philosophy and attempt to show how this modus operandi of Canadian public life is capable of reconciling questions of collective identity and recognition with a commitment to individual rights and related principles of liberal democracy. They further argue that this philosophy can serve as a model for nations around the world faced with internal complexities and growing demands for recognition from populations more diverse than at any previous time in their histories.

Most foundational works in political philosophy have made fundamentally false and far-reaching assumptions concerning the culturally homogeneous character of the polity.Deliberative Democracy, Political Legitimacy, andSelf-Determination in Multicultural Societies provides a much needed corrective to conventional accounts of the normative foundations of the state by reconceptualizing some of the fundamental issues in political theory from a perspective that recognizes the culturally pluralistic character of contemporary democracies. Among the issues considered are democratic deliberation in multicultural societies, the justification and function of political communities, the nature of self-determination, the justification of cultural rights, and the moral rationale for regional self-governance and secession. This work is suitable for graduate and upper-division undergraduate courses in political philosophy and political science, as well as the lay reader interested in understanding the major sources of conflict and instability in democratic societies.

The idea of political unity – or belonging – contains its own opposite, because a political community can never guarantee the equal status of all its members. The price of belonging is an entrenched social stratification and hierarchy within the political unit itself. Lived Fictions explores how the notion of political unity generates a collective commitment to imagining the structure of Canadian society. These political imaginaries – the citizen-state, the market economy, and so forth – are lived fictions. They orient our national identity and shape our understanding of political legitimacy, responsibility, and action. John Grant persuasively details why the project of political unity fails: it distorts our lived experiences and allows inequality and domination to take root. Canada promises unity through democratic politics, reconciliation with Indigenous peoples, a welfare state that protects the vulnerable, and a multicultural approach to cultural relations. This book documents the historical failure of these promises and elaborates the kinds of radical institutional and intellectual changes needed to overcome our lived fictions.

Notions of "community" are found in almost every educational context from primary schools to HE institutions. Given the polemic nature of promoting community in schools and society today, this fascinating book uses an interdisciplinary approach of political philosophy and sociology to develop theoretical principles for the promotion of communities, and subsequently applies them to the realities of schools and society. This book is fully international, drawing on examples and references from the UK, US and Canada.

The book contains contributions from thirteen distinguished moral and political philosophers on the subject of children. These are new essays and are devoted to a subject that until recently has not been extensively discussed by philosophers. Too often philosophers restrict themselves to the consideration only of the relations between adults. Yet the topic of children is an important one for moral and political philosophy. Recent years have seen an increased concern with the needs and interests of young people. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child which accords a wide range of fundamental rights to children was adopted in 1989 and many states have subsequently ratified the Convention. In this context it is timely and appropriate to ask various questions. If children do not have rights what exactly is their moral status? If they do have rights do they have all the rights that adults have? What rights if any do parents have over children and what is their justification? What duties do parents have towards their own children and towards others in society? How should we educate those who will be the future citizens and workers of our society? What values and what dispositions of character is it appropriate to instil in children? Is the family an obstacle to the realisation of full social justice? Can we in pursuit of justice contemplate the abolition of the family? The book covers the themes of children's rights, parental rights and duties, the family and justice, and civic education.

The massive scale and complexity of international migration today tends to obscure the nuanced ways migrant families seek a sense of belonging. In this book, Pamela Feldman-Savelsberg takes readers back and forth between Cameroon and Germany to explore how migrant mothers—through the careful and at times difficult management of relationships—juggle belonging in multiple places at once: their new country, their old country, and the diasporic community that bridges them. Feldman-Savelsberg introduces readers to several Cameroonian mothers, each with her own unique history, concerns, and voice. Through scenes of their lives—at a hometown association’s year-end party, a celebration for a new baby, a visit to the Foreigners’ Office, and many others—as well as the stories they tell one another, Feldman-Savelsberg enlivens our thinking about migrants’ lives and the networks and repertoires that they draw on to find stability and, ultimately, belonging. Placing women’s individual voices within international social contexts, this book unveils new, intimate links between the geographical and the generational as they intersect in the dreams, frustrations, uncertainties, and resolve of strong women holding families together across continents.