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Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age
Free Press
January 2011
On Sale: January 4, 2011
272 pages
ISBN: 1416596151
EAN: 9781416596158
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
An unrelenting flow of choices confronts us at nearly every
moment of our lives, and yet our culture offers us no clear
way to choose. This predicament seems inevitable, but in
fact it's quite new. In medieval Europe, God's calling was a
grounding force. In ancient Greece, a whole pantheon of
shining gods stood ready to draw an appropriate action out
of you. Like an athlete in "the zone," you were called to a
harmonious attunement with the world, so absorbed in it that
you couldn't make a "wrong" choice. If our culture no longer
takes for granted a belief in God, can we nevertheless get
in touch with the Homeric moods of wonder and gratitude, and
be guided by the meanings they reveal? All Things Shining
says we can.Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly
illuminate some of the greatest works of the West to reveal
how we have lost our passionate engagement with and
responsiveness to the world. Their journey takes us from the
wonder and openness of Homer's polytheism to the monotheism
of Dante; from the autonomy of Kant to the multiple worlds
of Melville; and, finally, to the spiritual difficulties
evoked by modern authors such as David Foster Wallace and
Elizabeth Gilbert.Dreyfus, a philosopher at the University
of California, Berkeley, for forty years, is an original
thinker who finds in the classic texts of our culture a new
relevance for people's everyday lives. His lively,
thought-provoking lectures have earned him a podcast
audience that often reaches the iTunesU Top 40. Kelly, chair
of the philosophy department at Harvard University, is an
eloquent new voice whose sensitivity to the sadness of the
culture--and to what remains of the wonder and gratitude
that could chase it away--captures a generation
adrift.Re-envisioning modern spiritual life through their
examination of literature, philosophy, and religious
testimony, Dreyfus and Kelly unearth ancient sources of
meaning, and teach us how to rediscover the sacred, shining
things that surround us every day. This book will change the
way we understand our culture, our history, our sacred
practices, and ourselves. It offers a new--and very old--way
to celebrate and be grateful for our existence in the modern
world.
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