War. Magic. A lover's betrayal. A dark secret lies beneath them all. Each year, Democryos sends his brightest student into the war-torn countryside to work magic. But when his wife leaves him for a mysterious stranger, he finds his own life ravaged. Forsaking the comfort of the citadel, he searches for her, traveling through the same forgotten lands where he sent his students. Along the way, he befriends an elusive member of the king’s harem, a holy man harboring guilt, and a maimed soldier. Together, they stumble upon a key—not only to the war, but to understanding the magic of voidance itself. "Wozniak's medieval world, as described, is a beautiful one; from the sky, it "looks like thousands of curved pieces of glass" covering everything "in blues and greens." The book also wonderfully handles the notion of a preindustrial society discovering the atomic structure of nature. Yet the plot's human elements--which include romance, drug addiction, and trust across philosophical lines--often shine brightest. Revelations and combat converge in the propulsive finale, and Wozniak's strong imagination will rope fans in." - Kirkus Reviews

Your genuine, go-to overview of Tibetan Buddhism from a leading contemporary teacher who has traversed the wisdom path This guide shares Tibetan Buddhist insight and tools that will benefit everyone in transforming their mind. Khenpo Sodargye, who has attracted hundreds of thousands of students worldwide with his concise, easy-to-follow teaching style, sketches the big picture of the Mahayana path in straightforward language with stories relevant to everyday life. He draws on authentic texts and teachings by renowned Buddhist masters to explain complex concepts like: The Four Dharma Seals Faith Bodhichitta The Three Supreme Methods The Two Truths Rebirth and karma Spiritual teachers The Great Perfection This book introduces a systematic approach to studying Mahayana Buddhism. Through proper listening, contemplating, and meditating, we can generate the wisdom that enables us to transform suffering and happiness into enlightenment and to cultivate the compassion that inspires us to bring enlightenment to everyone, which is the essence of Mahayana Buddhism. This book is the perfect companion for anyone wanting to learn more about the basics of Mahayana Buddhism or to strengthen the foundations of their spiritual practice.

The feature which distinguishes the great works of materialist thought, from Lucretius' De rerum natura through Capital to the writings of Lacan, is their unfinished character: again and again they tackle their chosen problem. Schelling's Weltalter drafts belong to this same series, with their repeated attempt at the formulation of the 'beginning of the world,' of the passage from the pre-symbolic pulsation of the Real to the universe of logos. F.W.J. Schelling, the German idealist who for too long dwelled in the shadow of Kant and Hegel, was the first to formulate the post-idealist motifs of finitude, contingency and temporality. His unique work announces Marx's critique of speculative idealism, as well as the properly Freudian notion of drive, of a blind compulsion to repeat which can never be sublated in the ideal medium of language. The Indivisible Remainder begins with a detailed examination of the two works in which Schelling's speculative audacity reached its peak: his essay on human freedom and his drafts on the "Ages of the World." After reconstituting their line of argumentation, Slavoj Zizek confronts Schelling with Hegel, and concludes by throwing a Schellingian light on some "related matters": the consequences of the computerization of daily life for sexual experience; cynicism as today's predominant form of ideology; the epistemological deadlocks of quantum physics. Although the book is packed with examples from politics and popular culture - the unmistakable token of Zizek's style - from Speed and Groundhog Day to Forrest Gump, it signals a major shift towards a systematic concern with the basic questions of philosophy and the roots of the crisis of our late-capitalist universe, centred around the enigma of modern subjectivity.

The “formidably brilliant” Žižek considers sexuality, ontology, subjectivity, and Marxian critiques of political economy by way of Lacanian psychoanalysis. If the most interesting theoretical interventions emerge today from the interspaces between fields, then the foremost interspaceman is Slavoj Žižek. In Incontinence of the Void (the title is inspired by a sentence in Samuel Beckett's late masterpiece Ill Seen Ill Said), Žižek explores the empty spaces between philosophy, psychoanalysis, and the critique of political economy. He proceeds from the universal dimension of philosophy to the particular dimension of sexuality to the singular dimension of the critique of political economy. The passage from one dimension to another is immanent: the ontological void is accessible only through the impasses of sexuation and the ongoing prospect of the abolition of sexuality, which is itself opened up by the technoscientific progress of global capitalism, in turn leading to the critique of political economy. Responding to his colleague and fellow Short Circuits author Alenka Zupančič's What Is Sex?, Žižek examines the notion of an excessive element in ontology that gives body to radical negativity, which becomes the antagonism of sexual difference. From the economico-philosophical perspective, Žižek extrapolates from ontological excess to Marxian surplus value to Lacan's surplus enjoyment. In true Žižekian fashion, Incontinence of the Void focuses on eternal topics while detouring freely into contemporary issuesfrom the Internet of Things to Danish TV series.

This collection presents geography’s most in-depth and sustained engagements with the void to date, demonstrating the extent to which related themes such as gaps, cracks, lacks, and emptiness perforate geography’s fundamental concepts, practices, and passions.

When "Mahamudra" first appeared in 1986, it was a landmark in the history of Buddhist publishing in English. It was translated at the behest of the 16th Karmapa, who was asked what text would be most beneficial to Western practitioners. Collecting all of Mahamudra's key texts in one volume, the book is a staple for practitioners of the Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism, who appreciate its detailed theoretical and practical explanations. This stunning new edition, printed on fine paper, is as inspiring to behold as it is to read.

Ranging across philosophy, theology, ecology, psychology, and art, in Dump Philosophy Michael Marder argues that the earth, along with everything that lives and thinks on it, is at an advanced stage of being converted into a dump for industrial output and its by-products feeding consumerism and its excesses. Every day, scientific studies, media reports, and first-hand accounts of the rapidly deteriorating state of the environment hit us with a growing and disconcerting force. Trends such as microplastics in water, airborne toxins, topsoil degradation, and dangerous levels of carbon dioxide have upset the delicate ecological balance that has until now been sustaining life on the planet. Marder's original treatise paints a portrait of the Anthropocene as a global dump which wreaks havoc, causing disease and degrading our sensation, perception, and thinking, so that nuance is lost and ideas are reduced to soundbites in chains of free association. Describing the dump's fundamental characteristics and its effects on the body and the mind, he contemplates wider physiological, social, economic, and environmental metabolisms in the age of dumping, as well as the role of philosophy caught in its crosshairs. While surveying the devastation that is the reality of the twenty-first century, the book provides a frightening and yet intellectually spellbinding glimpse of the future.

A radical reinterpretation of the origin of religion through a psychoanalytic theorization of the unknown Renowned psychoanalytic philosopher Richard Boothby puts forward a novel theory of religion inspired by Jacques Lacan’s theory of das Ding, the disquieting, inaccessible dimension of fellow human beings. This notion of an unfathomable excess, originally encountered in the figure of the mother, led Lacan to break with Freud’s formulation of the Oedipus complex and underlies Lacan’s distinctive conception of unconscious dynamics. Leaning on this account, Boothby shows how our sense of the sacred arises from our relation to what we do not know. Embracing the Void lays out the range of Freud’s attempts at a psychoanalytic theory of religion and then sketches the rough contours of Lacan’s contrasting approach. From there, Boothby offers the theoretical tools for interpreting the religious impulse and analyzes key religious traditions, from ancient Greek polytheism to Judaism and Christianity, and from Hinduism and Buddhism to Islam, finally turning to modern capitalist culture and the seductive deity that dominates it—money. Lucid, accessible, and compelling, the book provides a cogent intervention in one of the psychoanalytic tradition’s most contentious topics and offers a new approach to our understanding of religion.

There have been many—too many—attempts over the centuries to bring science and religion into harmony. James A. Arieti and Patrick A. Wilson survey and assess these various efforts, from Plato to Aquinas to present-day philosophers and theologians. The Scientific & The Divine examines the perennial issues that keep science and religion at arm's length, clarify those issues, and fit them into an historical framework. This book is ideal for use as a textbook in any course that discusses the interplay between science and faith. Arieti and Wilson do not push an agenda—they take a critical, analytical look at the theories that started when the ancient Greeks realized the religious implications of scientific discovery. The Scientific & The Divine shows the historical continuity of both the central issues and the many potential solutions, and demonstrates which of these theories comes closest to saving the marriage between science and religion.

Volume one of the acclaimed Oxford translation of Aristotle’s works—now fully revised and expanded Originally published in twelve volumes between 1912 and 1954, the Oxford translation of Aristotle is universally recognized as the standard English version of the great philosopher’s works. This revised edition has been fully updated in the light of modern scholarship while remaining faithful to the substance and vibrancy of the original translation. Now available in two volumes with three new translations and an enlarged selection of Fragments, The Complete Works of Aristotle makes the surviving writings of Aristotle readily accessible to a new generation of English-speaking readers.