Kirjahaku

Over 25 centuries ago, the Greek philosopher Protagoras declared: ""on every question there are two opposing answers, including this one"". This work sets out to demonstrate that Protagoras' statement constitutes one of the fundamental principles of aesthetic and rhetorical theory.

The American domestic landscape has never been bleaker. Gone are the optimistic ideals of the American dream. The income gap continues to increase, the American manufacturing industry has all but disappeared, and jobs are outsourced overseas. When manufacturing opportunities disappear, we compete for low-paying service industry jobs. Our access to health care, clean water, and clear air is threatened by government paralysis. While elected officials squabble, place blame, and fail to represent the people who elected them, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. The once thriving middle class is withering. What happened in the last fifty years to drive these negative changes? What is the role of the government in these turbulent times? Does the individual have a voice for change? If so, how best can we achieve positive government reform? Author Paul Gordon recognizes the need for a government that's capable of evolving with the populace. He sees the Constitution as a living document that can adjust to the times. His timely new book, Unions, Public Heath, Government Action, Oh My, is an insightful and brutally honest analysis of how we got here and how we can return to a robust economy-one built for Americans, by Americans.

Art as the Absolute is a literary and philosophical investigation into the meaning of art and its claims to truth. Exploring in particular the writings of Kant and those who followed after, including Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche, Paul Gordon contends that art solves the problem of how one can “know” the absolute in non-conceptual, non-discursive terms.The idea of art’s inherent relation to the absolute, first explicitly rendered by Kant, is examined in major works from 1790 to 1823. The first and last chapters, on Plato and Nietzsche respectively, deal with precursors and “post-cursors” of this idea. Gordon shows and seeks to reddress the lack of attention to this idea after Hegel, as well as in contemporary reassessments of this period. Art as the Absolute will be of interest to students and scholars studying aesthetics from both a literary and philosophical perspective.

Art as the Absolute is a literary and philosophical investigation into the meaning of art and its claims to truth. Exploring in particular the writings of Kant and those who followed after, including Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche, Paul Gordon contends that art solves the problem of how one can “know” the absolute in non-conceptual, non-discursive terms.The idea of art’s inherent relation to the absolute, first explicitly rendered by Kant, is examined in major works from 1790 to 1823. The first and last chapters, on Plato and Nietzsche respectively, deal with precursors and “post-cursors” of this idea. Gordon shows and seeks to reddress the lack of attention to this idea after Hegel, as well as in contemporary reassessments of this period. Art as the Absolute will be of interest to students and scholars studying aesthetics from both a literary and philosophical perspective.

Paul Gordon proposes a new theory of art as synaesthetic and applies this idea to various media, including works--such as movies, illustrated books, and song lyrics--that explicitly cross over into media involving the different senses. The idea of art as synaesthetic is not, however, limited to those "cross-over" works, because even an individual poem or novel or painting calls upon different senses in creating its syn-aesthetic "meaning.” Although previous studies have often devolved into those who see an obvious connection between art and synaesthesia and those who adamantly reject such a notion, Synaesthetics furthers our understanding of synaesthesia as an important, if not essential, component of artistic expression.

Paul Gordon proposes a new theory of art as synaesthetic and applies this idea to various media, including works--such as movies, illustrated books, and song lyrics--that explicitly cross over into media involving the different senses. The idea of art as synaesthetic is not, however, limited to those "cross-over" works, because even an individual poem or novel or painting calls upon different senses in creating its syn-aesthetic "meaning.” Although previous studies have often devolved into those who see an obvious connection between art and synaesthesia and those who adamantly reject such a notion, Synaesthetics furthers our understanding of synaesthesia as an important, if not essential, component of artistic expression.

While many works on Hitchcock either openly reject psychoanalysis or utilize it only casually or peripherally, Dial 'M' for Mother: A Freudian Hitchcock is the first book-length study to consistently and systematically apply a Freudian psychoanalytic approach to a number of Hitchcock's major films (Shadow of a Doubt, Rear Window, Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho, The Birds, Marnie, Frenzy). Central to this book is the author's analysis of a 'mother complex' that informs not only the major male and female characters of these and other Hitchcock films but their plot, formal structure, and visual, cinematic artistry as well. According to the author, the genius of Hitchcock is inseparable from the director's unrelenting adherence to the 'darker side' of our unconscious fears and fascinations, and in its unwillingness to veil this exploration of the Freudian Unconscious with Hollywood's and society's denial of such truths.

Victor Serge was the first and the greatest witness of the twentieth century. An anarchist in France, a syndicalist in Spain, a critical Bolshevik in Russia, an agent of the Comintern in Germany and Austria, an exile, Serge once said that people judged history, but they did so without knowing what really happened and who the actors really were. All his work - novels. reportage, poetry, criticism - was an attempt to show what really happened, and why. Serge never lost hope, that ordinary people would act for themselves and take control of their own lives. On the ship taking him to exile in Mexico, where he would die isolated and in poverty, he recalled, 'The Russians and Spaniards among us know what it is to take the world into their hands, to set the railways running and the factories working...no kind of predestination impels us to become the offal of the concentration camps.'

At a time when the term “freedom” is loosely—and dangerously—bandied about, this work makes the important distinction between positive and negative freedom, and examines the various “zones” of positive freedom (art, religion, academia, politics, speech, etc.)

Therapy is not a matter of technique but is rather an art or craft and has much to learn from other forms of art and craft, such as painting, fiction, music and poetry. Like artists, therapists need to feel free if they are to be truly creative. This book presents an argument for that therapeutic freedom.

Providing places of asylum has been at the heart of the Philadelphia Association's endeavours for more than 40 years. Hundreds of men and women, whether formally designated 'mentally ill' or experiencing serious emotional distress to the point where they can no longer cope, have found in our houses a haven, a place where, in the company of others, they are allowed to go through whatever they have to go through, in their own time and in their own way, free from the well-meaning interventions of psychiatry or family. The most famous of these was undoubtedly the first, Kingsley Hall, which opened in 1965 and which has come to have an almost iconic status in the world of what has come to be called critical (or less accurately anti-) psychiatry. When Kingsley Hall closed in 1970 (when the lease expired) the PA's attempt at providing a radically different approach to the treatment of those in states of severe emotional distress did not come to an end, as many people seem to believe. Rather it took different forms and has continued to this day.The weekend that the PA moved out of Kingsley Hall, a new community opened and more than 15 houses have been run under our auspices since and several hundred people have spent some time in them. The houses have been an inspiration to many others too. Despite our longevity and the radically different nature of our project, surprisingly little has been written about our endeavours in this respect, a few book chapters and articles, and an unpublished PhD thesis. The Philadelphia Association (PA) has never been good at self-promotion. In part this was an understandable reaction to the period when the PA was most closely identified with one of its founders, the highly public figure of RD Laing, but it has meant that what we do - which is arguably unique in its field - has felt at times like a guilty secret. This book is an attempt to correct that.