Böcker av Steven Schroeder

Inspired by the commonplace books and epistolary tradition of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in which writers ranged through science, philosophy, music, theology, poetry, and anything else that struck their fancies, this book is a collaboration, an improvisation in two voices. Drawing on a variety of traditions and a cloud of witnesses, from Amos Wilder, Paul Ricoeur, and Theodor Adorno to Michael Taussig and Zhao Dongming, along with wide-ranging riffs on Hebrew and Christian scriptures, the authors search reality''s mysteries with wit and insight.

This book is an attempt to critically embrace a tradition--a culture--in which the author was formed and against which he has often found himself in resistance, using academic disciplines in which he is well versed but about which he is deeply suspicious. This book began to come together as a book in a series of lectures on the history of Western thought at Shenzhen University in the People''s Republic of China, an opportunity to cultivate disciplined criticism that might afford a second look at traditions behind the West which are being embraced all too quickly. In a time of acceleration, this book offers a meditation on the virtue of hesitation.The book is an invitation to philosophy and the history of ideas, but it is also a sustained critical reflection on the religious dimensions--explicit and implicit--of those ideas, with enough utopian vision left to imagine a city in which violence is not necessary.""Combining erudition of a true scholar and insight of a gifted poet, professor Steven Schroeder offers his readers an adventurous ''pilgrimage'' of mind into the realms of cultural history, philosophy, and religion. This perfectly structured, consistent, and well-argued book is a good companion to anyone who wishes to transgress the boundaries of supposedly ''Western'' ideas and open new vistas to the territories that reflect the legacy of so many vanished civilizations."" --Almantas SamalaviciusVilnius Gediminas Technical University and Vilnius University""This new book by Steven Schroeder contains careful examinations of and insightful reflections on the intellectual history of the West. It not only provides us with guidance when journeying through the labyrinth of Western ideas, but it enables us to see how ideas, almost always intertwined with human desires and fears, are projected into the real world and contribute to transform the place we live in. It is highly illuminating for understanding the human creation of ideas, and therefore, is instructive to anyone who wants to coexist harmoniously with others in the twenty-first century.""--Dongming ZhaoShenzhen University, People''s Republic of China.""Without ever raising his voice, the author challenges some of our most cherished assumptions--the centrality of ''the West,'' the primacy of Greek thought in the development of Western philosophy, and the identification of heroic virtue with aggression and conquest--among others. Here is philosophy restored to its mission of ''passionate engagements in a controversy that matters.'' The fact that Schroeder is a poet as well as a scholar makes this book a pleasure to read and of interest to the general reader as well as to scholars and specialists.--A. G. Mojtabaiauthor of Blessed Assurance ""How to summarize this heady ride from Babel to Thebes to Shenzhen, from the meaning of language to the meaning of meaning . . . Where is God? What is really real? Who is the stranger? This book rockets from the paradox of free will to the paradox of slavery, from redefining Descartes to rediscovering forgotten giants such as Anne Conway. Read this book and rediscover what the work of philosophy and the play of wisdom is all about.""--Rev. David Breedenauthor of This Is Just To Say: Meditations on a Theme by William Carlos WilliamsSteven Schroeder is an instructor in Asian Classics and the Basic Program of Liberal Education for Adults at the University of Chicago Graham School and Visiting Professor in the School of Foreign Languages at Shenzhen University in the People''s Republic of China. His most recent book is Six Stops South (2009).

The forty poems in this collection have percolated through more than forty years of meditation on "city" that began when I was an undergraduate studying with Richard Luecke at Valparaiso University. The title, "In the Path of Totality," references a phrase made familiar by media coverage leading up to the total solar eclipse that was visible across the middle of the United States in August 2017. The path of totality tracked part of a route I've driven many times over the past forty years on frequent trips between Chicago (where I live and work) and the Texas Panhandle (where I grew up), and the phrase calls to mind a philosophical question that has been of particular interest to me during those same years. It seemed to take on a life of its own when the eclipse was billed as "all-American" - and became in my mind shorthand for the kinds of nightmares I imagine Kierkegaard had about Hegel and his System. Some of the poems have appeared in earlier versions, but all have been reformed and made new for this collection, organized around a formal structure that is itself a subtle meditation on what counts in our presencing. Imagery is drawn from cities some readers will recognize - Chicago, Boston, Shenzhen - but always with an eye on the city scattered across the plains that I have come to see as the we by which I am.

Description:This book is an attempt to critically embrace a tradition--a culture--in which the author was formed and against which he has often found himself in resistance, using academic disciplines in which he is well versed but about which he is deeply suspicious. This book began to come together as a book in a series of lectures on the history of Western thought at Shenzhen University in the People''s Republic of China, an opportunity to cultivate disciplined criticism that might afford a second look at traditions behind the West which are being embraced all too quickly. In a time of acceleration, this book offers a meditation on the virtue of hesitation.The book is an invitation to philosophy and the history of ideas, but it is also a sustained critical reflection on the religious dimensions--explicit and implicit--of those ideas, with enough utopian vision left to imagine a city in which violence is not necessary.Endorsements:""Combining erudition of a true scholar and insight of a gifted poet, professor Steven Schroeder offers his readers an adventurous ''pilgrimage'' of mind into the realms of cultural history, philosophy, and religion. This perfectly structured, consistent, and well-argued book is a good companion to anyone who wishes to transgress the boundaries of supposedly ''Western'' ideas and open new vistas to the territories that reflect the legacy of so many vanished civilizations."" --Almantas SamalaviciusVilnius Gediminas Technical University and Vilnius University""This new book by Steven Schroeder contains careful examinations of and insightful reflections on the intellectual history of the West. It not only provides us with guidance when journeying through the labyrinth of Western ideas, but it enables us to see how ideas, almost always intertwined with human desires and fears, are projected into the real world and contribute to transform the place we live in. It is highly illuminating for understanding the human creation of ideas, and therefore, is instructive to anyone who wants to coexist harmoniously with others in the twenty-first century.""--Dongming ZhaoShenzhen University, People''s Republic of China.""Without ever raising his voice, the author challenges some of our most cherished assumptions--the centrality of ''the West,'' the primacy of Greek thought in the development of Western philosophy, and the identification of heroic virtue with aggression and conquest--among others. Here is philosophy restored to its mission of ''passionate engagements in a controversy that matters.'' The fact that Schroeder is a poet as well as a scholar makes this book a pleasure to read and of interest to the general reader as well as to scholars and specialists.--A. G. Mojtabaiauthor of Blessed Assurance ""How to summarize this heady ride from Babel to Thebes to Shenzhen, from the meaning of language to the meaning of meaning . . . Where is God? What is really real? Who is the stranger? This book rockets from the paradox of free will to the paradox of slavery, from redefining Descartes to rediscovering forgotten giants such as Anne Conway. Read this book and rediscover what the work of philosophy and the play of wisdom is all about.""--Rev. David Breedenauthor of This Is Just To Say: Meditations on a Theme by William Carlos WilliamsAbout the Contributor(s):Steven Schroeder is an instructor in Asian Classics and the Basic Program of Liberal Education for Adults at the University of Chicago Graham School and Visiting Professor in the School of Foreign Languages at Shenzhen University in the People''s Republic of China. His most recent book is Six Stops South (2009).