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1000 tulosta hakusanalla Jason Perkins

Trolling Ourselves to Death

Trolling Ourselves to Death

Jason Hannan

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS INC
2024
nidottu
Almost forty years ago, Neil Postman argued that television had brought about a fundamental transformation to democracy. By turning entertainment into our supreme ideology, television had recreated public discourse in its image and converted democracy into show business. In Trolling Ourselves to Death, Jason Hannan builds on Postman's classic thesis, arguing that we are now not so much amusing, as trolling ourselves to death. Yet, how do we explain this profound change? What are the primary drivers behind the deterioration of civic culture and the toxification of public discourse? Trolling Ourselves to Death moves beyond the familiar picture of trolling by recasting it in a broader historical light. Contrary to the popular view of the troll as an exclusively anonymous online prankster who hides behind a clever avatar and screen name, Hannan asserts that trolls have emerged from the cave, so to speak, and now walk in the clear light of day. Trolls now include politicians, performers, patriots, and protesters. What was once a mysterious phenomenon limited to the darker corners of the Internet has since gone mainstream, eroding our public culture and changing the rules of democratic politics. Hannan shows how trolling is the logical outcome of a culture of possessive individualism, widespread alienation, mass distrust, and rampant paranoia. Synthesizing media ecology with historical materialism, he explores the disturbing rise of political unreason in the form of mass trolling and sheds light on the proliferation of disinformation, conspiracy theory, "cancel culture," and digital violence. Taking inspiration from Robert Brandom's innovative reading of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Trolling Ourselves to Death makes a case for building "a spirit of trust" to curb the epidemic of mass distrust that feeds the plague of political trolling.
Democracy

Democracy

Jason Brennan

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS INC
2023
sidottu
How did “democracy” go from a pejorative label for mob rule to the widely shared ideal of enlightened self-rule? How has it evolved as an idea and a set of practices? How have the ways democracy has been practiced impacted the idea of democracy itself? In this short, accessible book, leading democratic theorist Jason Brennan guides readers through the evolution of the concept of democracy and actual democratic practice over time to help them understand the foundations of this longstanding and yet newly fragile political system. In his wide-ranging tour of the concept, Brennan will examine what democracy meant to the Greeks who first developed the concept before examining how it changed throughout European and later Western history. This will open up rich and perplexing questions. Over time, democracy shifted from being a fringe idea to the gold standard of political institutions: how did this change occur? How did the question of who counts as part of the ruling “people” change over time? As monarchies were replaced with democracies, what did theorists think the promises and perils of republican democracy were? How did actual democratic practice change the debates? What have we learned about how democracy functions--and in some cases, doesn't function--and what does this mean for future philosophical or empirical work? Brennan provides a curated, guided tour of the most important arguments for and against democracy, looking through the core values of stability, virtue, wisdom, freedom, and equality. The goal is to help readers understand what is really at stake in democracy and its alternatives. Democracy: A Guided Tour gives readers a crash course on the evolution of the idea of democracy, how it has been and is currently practiced, and how we might think about it as we head into a new chapter in its story.
A Time to Gather

A Time to Gather

Jason Lustig

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS INC
2022
sidottu
How do people link the past to the present, marking continuity in the face of the fundamental discontinuities of history? A Time to Gather argues that historical records took on potent value in modern Jewish life as both sources of history and anchors of memory because archives presented one way of transmitting Jewish culture and history from one generation to another as well as making claims of access to an “authentic” Jewish culture. Indeed, both before the Holocaust and in its aftermath, Jewish leaders around the world felt a shared imperative to muster the forces and resources of Jewish life and culture. It was a “time to gather,” a feverish era of collecting and conflict in which archive making was both a response to the ruptures of modernity and a mechanism for communities to express their cultural hegemony. Jason Lustig explores these themes across the arc of the twentieth century by excavating three distinctive archival traditions, that of the Cairo Genizah (and its transfer to Cambridge in the 1890s), folkloristic efforts like those of YIVO, and the Gesamtarchiv der deutschen Juden (Central or Total Archive of the German Jews) formed in Berlin in 1905. Lustig presents archive-making as an organizing principle of twentieth-century Jewish culture, as a metaphor of great power and broad symbolic meaning with the dispersion and gathering of documents falling in the context of the Jews' long diasporic history. In this light, creating archives was just as much about the future as it was about the past.
French Lyric Diction

French Lyric Diction

Jason Nedecky

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS INC
2023
sidottu
Singers, teachers, coaches, and conductors will appreciate French Lyric Diction: A Singer's Guide for its thorough account of the language as it is sung in opera and mélodie. Often-overlooked topics are explored, including phrasal and emphatic stress, vocalic length, singing the French r, and traditions in the setting of French poetry. Considerable attention is paid to the subject of liaison, with recommendations on how to make decisions about optional liaisons in singing. A comprehensive guide to orthography provides instruction on the pronunciation of all French spellings, including many optional secondary pronunciations, and accepted francisé pronunciation for loanwords. Pronunciation dictionaries give transcriptions for over 10,000 names of composers, poets, artists, roles, performers, characters, and places, as well as everyday musical terms.
French Lyric Diction

French Lyric Diction

Jason Nedecky

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS INC
2023
nidottu
Singers, teachers, coaches, and conductors will appreciate French Lyric Diction: A Singer's Guide for its thorough account of the language as it is sung in opera and mélodie. Often-overlooked topics are explored, including phrasal and emphatic stress, vocalic length, singing the French r, and traditions in the setting of French poetry. Considerable attention is paid to the subject of liaison, with recommendations on how to make decisions about optional liaisons in singing. A comprehensive guide to orthography provides instruction on the pronunciation of all French spellings, including many optional secondary pronunciations, and accepted francisé pronunciation for loanwords. Pronunciation dictionaries give transcriptions for over 10,000 names of composers, poets, artists, roles, performers, characters, and places, as well as everyday musical terms.
Cracks in the Ivory Tower

Cracks in the Ivory Tower

Jason Brennan; Phillip Magness

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS INC
2021
nidottu
Academics extol high-minded ideals, such as serving the common good and promoting social justice. Universities aim to be centers of learning that find the best and brightest students, treat them fairly, and equip them with the knowledge they need to lead better lives. But as Jason Brennan and Phillip Magness show in Cracks in the Ivory Tower, American universities fall far short of this ideal. At almost every level, they find that students, professors, and administrators are guided by self-interest rather than ethical concerns. College bureaucratic structures also often incentivize and reward bad behavior, while disincentivizing and even punishing good behavior. Most students, faculty, and administrators are out to serve themselves and pass their costs onto others. The problems are deep and pervasive: most academic marketing and advertising is semi-fraudulent. To justify their own pay raises and higher budgets, administrators hire expensive and unnecessary staff. Faculty exploit students for tuition dollars through gen-ed requirements. Students hardly learn anything and cheating is pervasive. At every level, academics disguise their pursuit of self-interest with high-faluting moral language. Marshaling an array of data, Brennan and Magness expose many of the ethical failings of academia and in turn reshape our understanding of how such high power institutions run their business. Everyone knows academia is dysfunctional. Brennan and Magness show the problems are worse than anyone realized. Academics have only themselves to blame.
Embattled America

Embattled America

Jason C. Bivins

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS INC
2022
sidottu
Histories of political religion since the 1960s often center on the rise of the powerful conservative evangelical voting bloc since the 1970s. One of the beliefs that has united these citizens is the idea that they are treated unfairly or are marginalized, despite their significant influence on public life. From the ascent of Reagan to the "Contract with America," from 9/11 to Obama to Trump--these claims have moved steadily to the center of conservative activism. Scholars of religion have approached these phenomena with great caution, generally focusing on institutional history, or relying on journalistic conveniences like "populism," or embracing the self-understandings of evangelicals themselves. None of these approaches is sufficiently calibrated to decoding the fierce convergence of online conspiracy theory, public violence, white supremacy, and religious authoritarianism. Accepting the narrative of Embattlement on its own terms, or examining it as mere turbulence on the path of American pluralism, overlooks how such deeper structural or atmospheric conditions work through this discourse to undermine the actual practice of democratic politics. Exploring the impact of these claims through case studies ranging from the Tea Party to Birthers to anti-sharia laws, Embattled America digs deeper into the debates between Martyrs (those who profess persecution) and Whistleblowers (those who sanctimoniously refute such claims). Hidden beneath each of these episodes is a series of ambivalences about democracy that require attention. Jason Bivins argues that the claims of Martyrs and Whistleblowers are symptoms of America's larger failings to strengthen the conditions for democratic life, and thus that rather than engaging their claims on the merits, concerned citizens should reassess fundamental democratic norms as part of a broader challenge to embolden American citizenship and institutions.
Libya and the Global Enduring Disorder

Libya and the Global Enduring Disorder

Jason Pack

Oxford University Press, USA
2022
sidottu
We no longer inhabit a world governed by international coordination, a unified NATO bloc, or an American hegemon. Traditionally, the decline of one empire leads to a restoration in the balance of power, via a struggle among rival systems of order. Yet this dynamic is surprisingly absent today; instead, the superpowers have all, at times, sought to promote what Jason Pack terms the 'Enduring Disorder'. He contends that Libya's ongoing conflict-more so than the civil wars in Yemen, Syria, Venezuela or Ukraine-constitutes the ideal microcosm in which to identify the salient features of this new era of geopolitics. The country's post-Qadhafi trajectory has been molded by the stark absence of coherent international diplomacy; while Libya's incremental implosion has precipitated cross-border contagion, further corroding global institutions and international partnership. Pack draws on over two decades of research in and on Libya and Syria to highlight the Kafkaesque aspects of today's global affairs. He shows how even the threats posed by the Arab Spring, and the Benghazi assassination of US Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, couldn't occasion a unified Western response. Rather, they have further undercut global collaboration, demonstrating the self-reinforcing nature of the progressively collapsing world order.
The Islamic State in Africa: The Emergence, Evolution, and Future of the Next Jihadist Battlefront
In 2019, Islamic State lost its last remaining sliver of territory in Syria, and its Caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was killed. These setbacks seemed to herald the Caliphate's death knell, and many now forecast its imminent demise. Yet its affiliates endure, particularly in Africa: nearly all of Islamic State's cells on the continent have reaffirmed their allegiance, attacks have continued in its name, many groups have been reinvigorated, and a new province has emerged. Why, in Africa, did the two major setbacks of 2019 have so little impact on support for Islamic State? The Islamic State in Africa suggests that this puzzle can be explained by the emergence and evolution of Islamic State's provinces in Africa, which it calls 'sovereign subordinates'. By examining the rise and development of eight Islamic State 'cells', the authors show how, having pledged allegiance to IS Central, cells evolved mostly autonomously, using the IS brand as a means for accrual of power, but, in practice, receiving relatively little if any direction or material support from central command. Given this pattern, IS Central's relative decline has had little impact on its African affiliates-who are likely to remain committed to the Caliphate's cause for the foreseeable future.
Co-operative Enterprise in Comparative Perspective

Co-operative Enterprise in Comparative Perspective

Jason S. Spicer

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS INC
2024
sidottu
Co-operative enterprises, which are democratically owned and governed by their workers, customers, or suppliers, have long captured the imagination of activists and social scientists alike. In centering economic democracy and a collectivist-democratic logic, and in embodying a "third way" alternative to profit-maximizing corporations and state-owned enterprises, co-operatives offer the promise of a more sustainable and equitable economy. Despite extensive study of co-operatives' real and imagined benefits, we know little about the conditions under which they achieve the lasting scale needed to be a viable alternative and transform the economy. Under what conditions can co-operatives achieve such scale? And are such conditions present in the United States, where, despite repeated organizing efforts, co-operatives remain exceptionally rare at scale? Through a rigorous comparative-historical analysis of co-operative enterprises in different national contexts, this book seeks to answer these questions. Deploying two different variants of the new institutionalism, Spicer treats the United States as a central case of comparative failure, as contrasted to three rich democracies where the co-operative business model has been more successful: Finland, France, and New Zealand. The cause of co-operatives' comparative weakness in the United States is identified as reflecting the joint effect of economic liberalism and structural racism. Only in the United States did the co-operative face, in its initial development, two well-entrenched incumbents operating with competing ownership models: the investor-owned firm and the race-based chattel slavery system of ownership of people. Proponents of these two models acted to deprive the co-operative movement of resources, and undermined the solidarity at the co-operative business model's heart, splintering the American co-operative movement in the process. In subsequent waves of co-operative organizing, advocates have never fully succeeded in overcoming these initial obstacles, resulting in a different outcome in the United States, consistent with broader conceptions of the United States as a perennial outlier (i.e., ""American exceptionalism""). In contrast, in the successful cases, advocates were better able to leverage resources to animate a national solidarity and procure the necessary political and economic resources to achieve scale.
Roman Virtue in the Early Christian Thought of Lactantius

Roman Virtue in the Early Christian Thought of Lactantius

Jason M. Gehrke

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS INC
2025
sidottu
Known since the Renaissance as the "Christian Cicero," Lucius Caecilius Firmianus Lactantius was a professor of Latin rhetoric, Christian apologist, and theologian at the court of Emperor Constantine. In this historical study, Jason M. Gehrke examines the central notion ofvirtusin Lactantius's major work,The Divine Institutes of the Christian Religion. This book begins by tracing the reception of classical Roman political and philosophical arguments about divinevirtusfrom their classical sources into the apologetic, exegetical, and doctrinal writings of Lactantius's predecessors — Tertullian, Minucius Felix, and Cyprian. Recognition of their influence illuminates the fundamental notion ofvirtusthat animates Lactantius's doctrine of God and his Christology. In this context, Lactantius's account of divinevirtusrevealed in Christ indicates the profound influence of classical Roman literature, philosophy, and politics upon the development of Christian thought in the third-century Latin West. Lactantius's Christology provides the immediate basis for his attempt to correct and reform classical Roman thinking about moral and political order. Gehrke thus examines Lactantius's arguments about wealth, sexuality, and warfare to show their intimate connection to his Christology and scriptural exegesis. In this account, Gehrke argues, Lactantius attempts a comprehensive synthesis of third century Latin Christian thinking about Christ's revelation and its implications for ethics and politics. Roman Virtue in the Early Christian Thought of Lactantiusthus presentsTheDivine Institutesas the first programmatic expression of early Latin Christian political theology in the Constantinian era. By attending to the traditional character of his arguments, this work provides a new basis for historical accounts of Lactantius and his contributions to Christianity in the pivotal era of Constantine's rise. Foreword by Anthony Briggman.
Directed Digital Dissidence in Autocracies

Directed Digital Dissidence in Autocracies

Jason Gainous; Rongbin Han; Andrew W. MacDonald; Kevin M. Wagner

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS INC
2024
sidottu
Does the Internet fundamentally change the flow of politically relevant information, even in authoritarian regimes? If so, does it alter the attitudes and behavior of citizens? While there is a fair amount of research exploring how social media has empowered social actors to challenge authoritarian regimes, there is much less addressing whether and how the state can actively shape the flow of information to its advantage. In China, for instance, citizens often resort to "rightful resistance" to lodge complaints and defend rights. By using the rhetoric of the central government, powerless citizens may exploit the slim political opportunity structure and negotiate with the state for better governance. But this tactic also reinforces the legitimacy of authoritarian states; citizens engage rightful resistance precisely because they trust the state, at least the central government, to some degree. Drawing on original survey data and rich qualitative sources, Directed Digital Dissidence in Autocracies explores how authoritarian regimes employ the Internet in advantageous ways to direct the flow of online information. The authors argue that the central Chinese government successfully directs citizen dissent toward local government through critical information that the central government places online--a strategy that the authors call "directed digital dissidence". In this context, citizens engage in low-level protest toward the local government, and thereby feel empowered, while the central government avoids overthrow. Consequently, the Internet functions to discipline local state agents and to project a benevolent image of the central government and the regime as a whole. With an in-depth look at the COVID-19 and Xinjiang Cotton cases, the authors demonstrate how the Chinese state employs directed digital dissidence and discuss the impact and limitations of China's information strategy.
Directed Digital Dissidence in Autocracies

Directed Digital Dissidence in Autocracies

Jason Gainous; Rongbin Han; Andrew W. MacDonald; Kevin M. Wagner

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS INC
2024
nidottu
Does the Internet fundamentally change the flow of politically relevant information, even in authoritarian regimes? If so, does it alter the attitudes and behavior of citizens? While there is a fair amount of research exploring how social media has empowered social actors to challenge authoritarian regimes, there is much less addressing whether and how the state can actively shape the flow of information to its advantage. In China, for instance, citizens often resort to "rightful resistance" to lodge complaints and defend rights. By using the rhetoric of the central government, powerless citizens may exploit the slim political opportunity structure and negotiate with the state for better governance. But this tactic also reinforces the legitimacy of authoritarian states; citizens engage rightful resistance precisely because they trust the state, at least the central government, to some degree. Drawing on original survey data and rich qualitative sources, Directed Digital Dissidence in Autocracies explores how authoritarian regimes employ the Internet in advantageous ways to direct the flow of online information. The authors argue that the central Chinese government successfully directs citizen dissent toward local government through critical information that the central government places online--a strategy that the authors call "directed digital dissidence". In this context, citizens engage in low-level protest toward the local government, and thereby feel empowered, while the central government avoids overthrow. Consequently, the Internet functions to discipline local state agents and to project a benevolent image of the central government and the regime as a whole. With an in-depth look at the COVID-19 and Xinjiang Cotton cases, the authors demonstrate how the Chinese state employs directed digital dissidence and discuss the impact and limitations of China's information strategy.
Force Without Authority

Force Without Authority

Jason Brownlee

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS INC
2025
sidottu
Force Without Authority explores why the United States' costliest military operations since Vietnam came up short and pushed Republican and Democratic leaders toward withdrawal and retrenchment. Covering the sweep of US armed interventions since the end of the Cold War, Jason Brownlee sets America's post-9/11 invasions in a thirty-five-year foreign-policy arc--from caution to bravado--and back. The al-Qaeda attacks suspended America's traditional aversion to high-risk military missions abroad. For the better part of a decade, presidents from both parties poured US troops into nation-building in Afghanistan and Iraq, only to return, in the 2010s, to a less hazardous and less ambitious program of eliminating enemies from a distance without reshaping politics on the ground. This same calculus pushed successive administrations toward diplomacy with America's most formidable foes. Critical and wide-sweeping, the book delivers a bracing audit of America's unipolar moment and a compelling case for statecraft over bluster.
Force Without Authority

Force Without Authority

Jason Brownlee

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS INC
2026
nidottu
Force Without Authority explores why the United States' costliest military operations since Vietnam came up short and pushed Republican and Democratic leaders toward withdrawal and retrenchment. Covering the sweep of US armed interventions since the end of the Cold War, Jason Brownlee sets America's post-9/11 invasions in a thirty-five-year foreign-policy arc--from caution to bravado--and back. The al-Qaeda attacks suspended America's traditional aversion to high-risk military missions abroad. For the better part of a decade, presidents from both parties poured US troops into nation-building in Afghanistan and Iraq, only to return, in the 2010s, to a less hazardous and less ambitious program of eliminating enemies from a distance without reshaping politics on the ground. This same calculus pushed successive administrations toward diplomacy with America's most formidable foes. Critical and wide-sweeping, the book delivers a bracing audit of America's unipolar moment and a compelling case for statecraft over bluster.
Mapping the Germans

Mapping the Germans

Jason D. Hansen

Oxford University Press
2015
sidottu
Mapping the Germans explores the development of statistical science and cartography in Germany between the beginning of the nineteenth century and the start of World War One, examining their impact on the German national identity. It asks how spatially-specific knowledge about the nation was constructed, showing the contested and difficult nature of objectifying this frustratingly elastic concept. Ideology and politics were not themselves capable of providing satisfactory answers to questions about the geography and membership of the nation; rather, technology also played a key role in this process, helping to produce the scientific authority needed to make the resulting maps and statistics realistic. In this sense, Mapping the Germans is about how the abstract idea of the nation was transformed into a something that seemed objectively measurable and politically manageable. Jason Hansen also examines the birth of radical nationalism in central Europe, advancing the novel argument that it was changes to the vision of nationality rather than economic anxieties or ideological shifts that radicalized nationalist practice at the close of the nineteenth century. Numbers and maps enabled activists to "see" nationality in local and spatially-specific ways, enabling them to make strategic decisions about where to best direct their resources. In essence, they transformed nationality into something that was actionable, that ordinary people could take real actions to influence.
The Intimate Screen

The Intimate Screen

Jason Jacobs

Clarendon Press
2000
nidottu
This book explores the formative period of British television drama, concentrating on the years 193655. It examines the continuities and changes of early television drama, and the impact this had upon the subsequent 'golden age'. In particular, it questions the caricature of early television drama as 'photographed stage plays' and argues that early television pioneers in fact produced a diverse range of innovative drama productions, using a wide range of techniques. It also explores the often competing definitions about the form and aesthetics of early television drama both inside and outside the BBC. Given the absence of an audio-visual record of early television drama, the book uses written archive material in order to reconstruct how early television drama looked, and how it was considered by producers and critics, whilst also offering a critical examination of surviving dramas, such as Rudolph Cartier's Nineteen Eighty-Four.
The Intimate Screen

The Intimate Screen

Jason Jacobs

Clarendon Press
2000
sidottu
This book explores the formative period of British television drama, concentrating on the years 1936-55. It examines the continuities and changes of early television drama, and the impact this had upon the subsequent 'golden age'. In particular, it questions the caricature of early television drama as 'photographed stage plays' and argues that early television pioneers in fact produced a diverse range of innovative drama productions, using a wide range of techniques. It also explores the often competing definitions about the form and aesthetics of early television drama both inside and outside the BBC. Given the absence of an audio-visual record of early television drama, the book uses written archive material in order to reconstruct how early television drama looked, and how it was considered by producers and critics, whilst also offering a critical examination of surviving dramas, such as Rudolph Cartier's Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Allegory and Enchantment

Allegory and Enchantment

Jason Crawford

Oxford University Press
2017
sidottu
What is modernity? Where are modernitys points of origin? Where are its boundaries? And what lies beyond those boundaries? Allegory and Enchantment explores these broad questions by considering the work of English writers at the threshold of modernity, and by considering,in particular, the cultural forms these writers want to leave behind. From the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries, many English writers fashion themselves as engaged in breaking away from an array of old idols: magic, superstition, tradition, the sacramental, the medieval. Many of these writers persistently use metaphors of disenchantment, of awakening from a broken spell, to describe their self-consciously modern orientation toward a medieval past. And many of them associate that repudiated past with the dynamics and conventions of allegory. In the hands of the major English practitioners of allegorical narrativeWilliam Langland, John Skelton, Edmund Spenser, and John Bunyanallegory shows signs of strain and disintegration. The work of these writers seems to suggest a story of modern emergence in which medieval allegory, with its search for divine order in the material world, breaks down under the pressure of modern disenchantment. But these four early modern writers also make possible other understandings of modernity. Each of them turns to allegory as a central organizing principle for his most ambitious poetic projects. Each discovers in the ancient forms of allegory a vital, powerful instrument of disenchantment. Each of them, therefore, opens up surprising possibilities: that allegory and modernity are inescapably linked; that the story of modern emergence is much older than the early modern period; and that the things modernity has tried to repudiatethe old enchantmentsare not as alien, or as absent, as they seem.
Isaac of Nineveh's Ascetical Eschatology

Isaac of Nineveh's Ascetical Eschatology

Jason Scully

Oxford University Press
2017
sidottu
Isaac of Nineveh's Ascetical Eschatology demonstrates that Isaac's eschatology is an original synthesis based on ideas garnered from a distinctively Syriac cultural milieu. Jason Scully investigates six sources relevant to the study of Isaac's Syriac source material and cultural heritage. These include ideas adapted from Syriac authors like Ephrem, John the Solitary, and Narsai, but also adapted from the Syriac versions of texts originally written in Greek, like Evagrius's Gnostic Chapters, Pseudo-Dionysius's Mystical Theology, and the Pseudo-Macarian homilies. Isaac's eschatological synthesis of this material is a sophisticated discourse on the psychological transformation that occurs when the mind has an experience of God. It begins with the premise that asceticism was part of God's original plan for creation. Isaac says that God created human beings with infantile knowledge and that God intended from the beginning for Adam and Eve to leave the Garden of Eden. Once outside the garden, human beings would have to pursue mature knowledge through bodily asceticism. Although perfect knowledge is promised in the future world, Isaac also believes that human beings can experience a proleptic taste of this future perfection. Isaac employs the concepts of wonder and astonishment in order to explain how an ecstatic experience of the future world is possible within the material structures of this world. According to Isaac, astonishment describes the moment when a person arrives at the threshold of eschatological perfection but is still unable to comprehend the heavenly mysteries, while wonder describes spiritual comprehension of heavenly knowledge through the intervention of divine grace.