While abundant research has investigated time use, much less attention has been given to the cultural meanings attached to free time and what these may express with regard to conceptions of freedom and the self. In an attempt to fill this gap, Michelle Shir-Wise examines not only what people do in their free time, but also how they perceive, interpret and experience it, and in what way it relates to notions of happiness, freedom and the ideal self. Time, Freedom and the Self draws on contemporary theoretical debates concerning the relation between discourse, cultural repertoires, subjective meaning and agency, as well as literature around the sociology of leisure, to inform a unique interpretation of free time (“disciplined freedom”), developed in the light of questionnaires and in-depth interviews with middle-class, middle-aged participants in suburban Israel.

This book offers a philosophical perspective on contemporary Tourette Syndrome scholarship, a field which has exploded over the last thirty years. Despite intense research efforts on this common neurodevelopmental condition in the age of the brain sciences, the syndrome’s causes and potential cures remain intriguingly elusive. How does this lack of progress relate to the tacitly operating philosophical concepts that shape our current thinking about Tourette Syndrome? This book foregrounds these tacit concepts and shows how they relate to “big topics” in philosophy such as time, volition, and the self. By tracing how these topics relate to current research on Tourette’s, it invites us to re-think our approach to research and care. Such re-thinking is urgently needed: individuals and families living with Tourette Syndrome remain under-serviced as pharmacological and behavioural therapies provide relief for some but not all who need support. This book highlights what questions we ask and do not ask in contemporary scholarship, thereby surfacing invisible constraints and opportunities in the field. It is of interest to scholars, health professionals, students, and affected families who want to better understand this burgeoning field of research with its conceptual controversies, approaches to aetiology, and directions for new research and improved clinical care.

A thought-provoking contribution to the renaissance of interest in Bergson, this study brings him to a new generation of readers. Ansell-Pearson contends that there is a Bergsonian revolution, an upheaval in philosophy comparable in significance to those that we are more familiar with, from Kant to Nietzsche and Heidegger, that make up our intellectual modernity. The focus of the text is on Bergson's conception of philosophy as the discipline that seeks to 'think beyond the human condition'. Not that we are caught up in an existential predicament when the appeal is made to think beyond the human condition; rather that restricting philosophy to the human condition fails to appreciate the extent to which we are not simply creatures of habit and automatism, but also organisms involved in a creative evolution of becoming. Ansell-Pearson introduces the work of Bergson and core aspects of his innovative modes of thinking; examines his interest in Epicureanism; explores his interest in the self and in time and memory; presents Bergson on ethics and on religion, and illuminates Bergson on the art of life.

This volume examines the dynamics of self-transcendence for both individuals and humanity as a whole. In doing so, it illuminates the definitive relationship between self-transcendence and global democracy. Drawing upon a vast literature of philosophy, psychology, and religion, ancient and modern, East and West, this book reveals the power of human futurity in actualizing our higher potential. It represents a real breakthrough in understanding our emerging new era in the evolution of humanity. It describes our transition from personal consciousness to global consciousness. The book includes chapters on the fundamental ideas that animate our self-understanding and define our common humanity. Through careful scholarship, it examines the dynamics of human dignity, freedom, love, community, intrinsic rights, and global ethics. It explores each of these concepts as a dimension of our human temporality as we envision and move into an ever-transcending future, a future that includes a World Parliament and planetary democracy. In our time of apparent hopelessness and despair, this volume reveals the grounds for a powerful hope that we can establish one world civilization of peace, justice, freedom, and sustainability. It makes a truly unique contribution, not found elsewhere in today’s literature, revealing the astonishing dignity and potential of being human. It is essential reading for all those concerned for the future of humanity and our precious planet Earth.

Contemporary Western society has a strange relationship with freedom. Unbridled subjective liberty and narrow fundamentalism pull away from each other in mutual loathing while sociological forces seek to manipulate both sides. The church needs to recover and reconstruct a theology of freedom to navigate between the perils of both extremes and to avoid being manipulated by these forces. Just as biblical figures are taught through parables and metaphors, this book uses jazz improvisation as an analogy for Christian freedom. Just as jazz improvisation relies on successfully navigating constraints such as the history and traditions of jazz, jazz theory, and musical instruments, so Christian freedom also relies on constraints such as the biblical canon, church history, theology, and the church itself. Through understanding the freedom jazz musicians enjoy in making music together, we can better understand how Christian freedom might be enacted in daily life. If Western churches discover and enact Christian freedom in a meaningful way, the songs that they improvise will be as siren calls to people in chains.

Here is a systematic reconstruction of the theory underlying a free society. By examining three fundamental constitutents of contemporary life—social membership, temporality, and freedom—the author raises questions of the meaning of citizenship, principles of governance, and the ways in which the fruitful pursuit of livelihood and leisure may be best advanced. Each is seen to suggest moral imperatives for the guidance of a free society. Drawing on intellectual and political inheritance, Sherover establishes the foundations of a pluralistic republicanism that evaluates its advancement of human freedom in practical and concrete terms.

This volume brings together a selection of papers written by Patricia Werhane during the most recent quarter century. The book critically explicates the direction and development of Werhane’s thinking based on her erudite and eclectic sampling of orthodox philosophical theories. It starts out with an introductory chapter setting Werhane’s work in the context of the development of Business Ethics theory and practice, along with an illustrative time line. Next, it discusses possible interpretations of the papers that have been divided across a range of themes, and examines Werhane’s contribution to these thematic areas. Patricia H. Werhane is a renowned author and innovator at the intersection of philosophy and Applied Business Ethics. She is professor emerita and a senior fellow at the Olsson Centre for Applied Ethics at Darden and was formerly the Ruffin Professor of Business Ethics. She is also professor emerita at DePaul University, where she was Wicklander Chair in Business Ethics and director of the Institute for Business and Professional Ethics. A prolific author whose works include Moral Imagination and Management Decision-Making and Organization Ethics for Health Care, Werhane is an acclaimed authority on employee rights in the workplace, one of the leading scholars on Adam Smith and founder and former editor-in-chief of Business Ethics Quarterly, the leading journal of Business Ethics. She was a founding member and past president of the Society for Business Ethics and, in 2001, was elected to the executive committee of the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics. Before joining the Darden faculty in 1993, Werhane served on the faculty of Loyola University Chicago and was a Rockefeller Fellow at Dartmouth College and Senior Fellow at Cambridge University.

This volume offers a practical and innovative interpretation of divine revelation, from a philosophical-theological perspective. Balázs M. Mezei outlines the most important presuppositions of our notion of divine revelation in a historic and semantic setting, as well as elaborating upon the methodology of model analysis. He then introduces and analyses the notion of self-revelation as the most important modern understanding of divine revelation; and presents the notion of “apocalyptic personhood” as a corollary of radical personhood, which is further developed into apocalyptic phenomenology. Mezei further examines the remarkable development of some of the most important notions in the history of Christianity, along with the homogenous infrastructure of these notions in the very essence of the religion: the doctrine of Trinity. Covering aspects of revelation from semantics to historical and cognitive origins, and engaging with a wide variety of texts – including Augustine, Thomas Aquinas and Joseph Ratzinger – Mezei makes a strong and clear statement when explaining what the radical revelation is, how it can be understood and its overall importance.