This Book, this Essay began as a response to Peter Berger et al’s , ‘The Homeless Mind’, and their concerns for the influence of Modernism on Societies. My interests and focus is both broader and wider; taking in the intellectual roots of western sociology and the earliest historical roots of the European Home; drawing on; Sociological Biography, Phenomenology, Multiple Realities, DIY techniques, Philosophy, Poetry, Consciousness and Spirituality, also with brief references to my cat! Usually each one of these would stand alone, perhaps as a conventional essay. But to combine them into a single entity, and to maintain a ‘flow' between ideas with varied resonances, required something more integrative; in this case derived from the spirit of Husserl’s phenomenology, the Epoque, freely applied throughout, not only to signify the tentativeness of personal opinion, but also as an example of multiple realities, and as tributaries of thought and beliefs feeding the great river of civilisation. The “Homely Mind’, of the title of this essay is one, more of a certain hope than achievement, as it might possibly be in most cases of all times and all places. So in the meantime, the best we can do is to endeavour to ‘keep the home fires burning’ as that sign of the ‘sacred flame of life’.

This book is about how we relate to our loved ones after they have died. To everything there is a season, a time to every purpose under the sun. A time to be born and a time to die: a time to sow, and a time to reap. A time to weep, a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance. Since the time of Herodotus, how we care for the dead has been regarded as the surest sign of civilisation, for they are still members of our families, as social beings, worthy of respect and honour. To be loved and celebrated as Part of the fabric of family life, continuing to dwell in us, individually and communally. The Dead matter because we cannot bear to give them up. Nabakov says, “Our existence is but a brief crack of light between two extremities of darkness.” It is in this light that we make sense of human relationships. The immeasurable weight of death - its cultural gravitas - bears down on the corpse and connects its materiality to the cosmic drama that transcends particular beliefs about the afterlife and journeys of the soul. The homes of the Dead, (their graves or tombs) speak directly to the needs of Memory — forever in our hearts and minds.

To be Enchanted, at one time, meant to be ‘carried away,’ from one’s hum-drum existence, to something or somewhere magical, perhaps even spiritual, at least, always more than merely physically pleasant! Of course, this depended on one’s beliefs in human souls. Take that away, and enchantment would be as mundane as everything else in modern daily life. No Soul means no possibility of Enchantment. Ken Evans.

‘Humble Anecdote of the Invisible’ is the final part of my condensed ‘Lebenswelt Studies’, necessarily autobiographical, and centred mostly on what amounted to a ‘mesocosm’ —an intermediary spiritual -world, between the macrocosm and microcosm, by artists, thinkers, poets and dancers who founded an experimental community, the ‘Hill of Truth’ in Ascona, during the early onset of Modernism, and later at Eronos, the intellectual and aesthetic hub founded by Olga Frobe in Ascona in 1933, to discuss the most pressing issues of the times: the nature of body and soul, social norms, religious belief, relationships, value of life, the human spirit, art and creativity; and their eventual making of an alternative spiritual and intellectual history of the twentieth century.

Melville's Philosophies departs from a long tradition of critical assessments of Melville that dismissed his philosophical capacities as ingenious but muddled. Its contributors do not apply philosophy to Melville in order to detect just how much of it he knew or understood. To the contrary, they try to hear the philosophical arguments themselves-often very strange and quite radical-that Melville never stopped articulating and reformulating. What emerges is a Melville who is materialistically oriented in a radical way, a Melville who thinks about life forms not just in the context of contemporary sciences but also ontologically. Melville's Philosophies recovers a Melville who is a thinker of great caliber, which means obliquely but dramatically reversing the way the critical tradition has characterized his ideas. Finally, as a result of the readings collected here, Melville emerges as a very relevant thinker for contemporary philosophical concerns, such as the materialist turn, climate change, and post-humanism.

Examines the writings of John Winthrop, Roger Williams, Cotton Mather, Jonathan Edwards, Benjamin Franklin, Tom Paine, and Thomas Jefferson

Popular science tour de force from bestselling authors, on evolution of intelligence, culture and mind.

In Liberalism, Puritanism and the Colonial Mind, Parrington gives a brilliant account of the beginning and development in American letters, the early ideas that have come to be reckoned as traditionally American—how they came into being, how they were opposed, and what influence they have exerted in determining the form and scope of our ideals and institutions. In doing so, the author follows the path of political, economic, and social development. This first of a three-volume work carries the account from early beginnings in Puritan New England to the triumph of Jefferson and back-country agrarianism. This first part of Main Currents in American Thought deals with intellectual backgrounds, especially with those diverse systems of European thought that have domesticated themselves in America. Parrington examines the legacies of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe to the colonial settlements and, in particular, the transplanting to America of old-world liberalisms. The liberalisms discussed in this book derive from two primary sources, English Independency and French Romantic theory, supplemented by English Whiggery. From the first came the revolutionary doctrine of natural rights, clarified by thinkers ranging from Roger Williams to John Locke. A doctrine that destroyed the philosophical sanction of divine right and substituted it for the traditional absolutism was formed. This struggle largely determined the course of development in early New England. A new introduction by Bruce Brown highlights the life of Vernon Louis Parrington and explains the importance of this Pulitzer-Prize winning study.