Product Description
he Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment (Llam rim chen mo) is one of the brightest jewels in the world's treasury of sacred literature. The author, Tsong-kha-pa (1357-1419), completed this masterpiece in 1402 and it soon became one of the most renowned works of spiritual practice and philosophy in the world of Tibetan Buddhism. Tsong-kha-pa took great pains to base his incisive insights on the classical Indian Buddhist literature, illustrating his points with classical citations as well as with sayings of the masters of the earlier Kadampa tradition. In this way the text demonstrates clearly how Tibetan Buddhism carefully preserved and developed the Indian Buddhist traditions.

This much anticipated third volume (the full set is three vol.) contains a presentation of the two most important topics to be found in the Great Treatise: meditative serenity (shamatha) and supramundane insight into the nature of reality (vipasyana). ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

The great Great Treatise
Briefly, this is a great contribution to the corpus of literature from the Tibetan Buddhist tradition in English.

The Great Treatise on the Stages to the Path to Enlightenment is synonymous for many with the Gelugpa tradition as whole, and given the historical centrality of that tradition, one could well argue that it is essential for students of Tibetan Buddhism to be able to read this work in its entirety. Given the complexity and length of the work, the translators have done us all an invaluable service. I feel we who are confined to English as the language in which we study the Dharma should consider ourselves lucky to have access to this comprehensive overview of the Buddhist path, seen from the point of view of Je Tsongkapa, one the pivotal figures in the long story of Buddhism in Tibet.

Excellent explanation of meditative serenity (shamatha) in Tibetan buddhism
(Because this is volume three, please refer to my review on volume one, ISBN 1559391529, for a general introduction to this important series).

Volume three in this series - which are about the "three precious trainings", that comprise the entire Tibetan buddhist path - covers the meditation practice of the superior training of the mahayana path. Meditation training consists of meditative serenity (shamatha) and insight (vipashyana), which are the last two perfections of the six perfections (paramitas) of the mahayana path.

The explanation of meditative serenity in this book is superb, and contains very clear sentences, such as: "Mindfulness is an accurate awareness whether you are distracted [where distraction is the opposite of meditation]." "Vigilance is an accurate awareness whether you are becoming distracted." "Exertion refers to tightly focusing your mind on virtue with clear enthusiasm."

The topics of shamatha and vipashyana are explained from all angles: Why together they are both necessary and complete, what is their nature, what are the advantages of developing their qualities as well as the disadvantages of not developing them, what are the obstructions to both, as well as the antidotes to these obstructions, and so on.

In short, this volume provides an excellent explanation of the practice of meditation, not easily found elsewhere.

Having said that, the second part of this book, which covers the topic of insight (vipashyana), is much less attractive, in my opinion, because it is a very advanced and detailed exposition of Tsongh-kha-pa's view on mahamudra, and less suitable for a beginning Western student, such as myself.

Altogether I really appreciate this volume for its explanation in the first part, on meditative serenity (shamatha), and how it relates to insight (vipashyana).

An essential source and superb companion
Probably one of the greatest works for spiritual progress, the Lam Rim Chenmo has been translated into three volumes.

This, the third volume consists of a lucid and well presented translation of the concentration and wisdom chapters.

The concentration chapter is a masterwork on developing the higher levels of meditative concentration, and being explicitly ecumenical, is relavant to anyone involved in meditation or mind training.

The wisdom chapter alone should be read and re-read by anyone who wishes have an unmistaken view.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama has been quoted as saying that this particular chapter is one of two expositions of emptiness that reveal the view.

In short, I cannot recommend this book highly enough. ... Read more

Product Description
"A powerful and original reconsideration of the thinking of Smith and Condorcet. This is a reinterpretation of Enlightenment political economy. Delightfully fresh, sensitive, sensible, and wide-ranging."

Keith Baker, Stanford University In a brilliant recreation of the epoch between the 1770s and the 1820s, Emma Rothschild reinterprets the ideas of the great revolutionary political economists to show us the true landscape of economic and political thought in their day, with important consequences for our own. Her work alters the readings of Adam Smith and Condorcet--and of ideas of Enlightenment--that underlie much contemporary political thought.Economic Sentiments takes up late-eighteenth-century disputes over the political economy of an enlightened, commercial society to show us how the "political" and the "economic" were intricately related to each other and to philosophical reflection. Rothschild examines theories of economic and political sentiments, and the reflection of these theories in the politics of enlightenment. A landmark in the history of economics and of political ideas, her book shows us the origins of laissez-faire economic thought and its relation to political conservatism in an unquiet world. In doing so, it casts a new light on our own times. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Invisible sleights of hand
This is a nicely done zoom level retrieval of the real Adam Smith (or one of them) before conservative ideologists appropriated his name and theories, resulting in amnesiac palpitations and the fulminations of Karl Marx. Adam Smith is an historically ambiguated figure whose reputation fluctuated very quickly between the era leading up and throughout the French Revolution and the era thereafter. We blame Rousseau for wicked deeds, in a snort at the Revolution, but similar 'misgivings' attended the radical Smith. This is a well done account, with a good critical history of the 'invisible hand' scenario, and a reminder of the dangers of historical hallucination curable only by hard labor at the historical record.

A new look at some old whipping boys
First, a romantic note - Rothschild dedicates this book to her husband Amartya Sen, and Sen dedicated his last book ('Development as Freedom') to her. So these books will lie side by side on my shelf. Both are well worth reading.

There is more than just a familial connection. Sen clearly used his wife's research on Smith and Condorcet in the writing of 'Development as Freedom' since the Adam Smith that appears in his book is not the cold and callous economist of myth. One suspects that Rothschild's perception of Smith and Condorcet had been coloured by Sen as she presents them as more than just economists as we understand the term, but concerned with a far wider range of phenomena in politics and sociology. In fact they were exactly as much an 'economist' as Sen himself is. As any reader of Sen knows, he covers an extremely broad range of factors in his work, not just GDP and income.

Rothschild argues that Smith's example of the 'invisible hand' that regulates free markets would have as easily been meant as a malign as a benign regulator. Traders who influence markets by bribery or trickery are as much an 'invisible hand' as an imagined self-regulating mechanism. In fact, the beneficient invisible hand was very much a product of later economists. Smith was not as negative on government regulation as he was made out to be by later writers, though strongly against price-fixing by government fiat, guilds which prevented fair competition, and over-zealous regulation of trade and commerce by insiders, profiteers and parasites.

Condorcet comes across as a very attractive human being, passionate and commited to his beliefs. Accused of Utopianism, he struggled with his conviction that he had no right to dictate opinion to others. Yet he believed that his liberal philosophy was best.He was concerned with the 'ordinary man in the street', and rejected any idea that he/ she should be indoctrinated with the 'right' ideas by a state-supported educational system. He wrote for the rights of women, believing that all humanity were entitled to equal rights.

I have to say the book is dense and quite difficult at times. However, it is the ideas that are difficult, not the presentation. It will probably repay a second reading.But I feel after reading this that I have had an excellent introduction to two first-class and important (in a world-historical sense) intellects.

In defence of the Enlightenment
To their enemies the Marquis de Condorcet was the epitome of the worst elements of the French Enlightenment, fatuously optimistic, subtly intolerant and dangerous utopian with his emphasis on the "perfectability" of man, while the notoriously absent-minded Adam Smith was the architect of a notoriously callous and philistine economic theory.Aside from that, the enthusiastic and idealistic Condorcet does not appear to have much in common with the quiet and discreet Smith.Emma Rothschild is the husband of the nobel prize winning economist A. Sen, whose most famous work shows the devastating effect dogmatically applied free market rules can have on worsening famines.Yet this book is a defense of the two from the critics of the Enlightenment.

To a surprising extent she succeeds.Conservatives will be unpleasantly surprised to read that in the decade after his death, mentioning your support of Smith did not prevent Scottish democrats from being transported to Australia by reactionary Scottish judges.For many years Tories did not view Smith as the great economist or philosopher.Instead Smith was the man whose account of his friend, the atheist philosopher David Hume on his deathbed, enraged the pious for showing Hume's complete calm, class and lack of fear of eternal damnation.Rothschild notes how the great economist Carl Menger noted how prominent socialists quoted Smith against their enemies.(Oddly enough she does not quote the passage in CAPITAL where Marx cites an enraged prelate angry at Smith for classifying priests as "unproductive labor.)Smith was an opponent of militarism, a supporter of high wages, and a supporter of French philosophy (and not unsympathetic to the French Revolution,either).Reading of his relations with Turgot and Condorcet, it will be much harder to defend the view of a sharp distinction between a good sensible Protestant Enlightenment, and a bad, Nasty, atheist one on the continent.

In discussing Turgot and Condorcet's support for the free trade in grain, which Smith also supported, Rothschild helps remind us that laissez faire did not simply mean watching while people starved.Confronted with the threat of famine in Limousin in 1770, Turgot preserved the freedom of the corn trade.But he also provided workshops for the poor, increased grain imports from other regions, reduced taxes for the poor, and protected poor tenants from eviction.Condorcet and Smith were both sympathetic to these policies.Rothschild also devotes a whole chapter to Smith's metaphor of the "invisible hand."She points out how rarely it was used in Smith's work, and how on the centennial of the publication of the Wealth of Nation almost no-one mentioned it, even at a special celebration organized by William Gladstone.She then goes into how the concept is used in Smith's works.The concept is complex, and in my view not entirely convincing.But she is successful in pointing out how Smith did not follow Hayek in viewing pre-existing structures as the product of an infallible "organic" wisdom.In contrast to the cant of a Calhoun or a Kendall, Smith realized that the most tyrannical acts of government are those that are local and unofficial.

One should point out the defense of Condorcet as well.In an age where Francois Furet, Keith Michael Baker, Mona Ozouf and others have castigated the French Revolutionary tradition as inherently totalitarian, it is good to be reminded that Condorcet is firmly in the liberal tradition.Like Smith, Condorcet was a great supporter of public education, in contrast to the conservative critics of both.Rothschild discusses his views as an economist, and as a theorist of proportional representation.Surprisingly she does not discuss what were Condorcet's most admirable views, his support for female emancipation and suffrage.But she is excellent in pointing out how Condorcet opposed the crassness of the utilitarians.She notes how Condorcet had a view of the limits of truth and scientific inquiry that would have been approved by Karl Popper himself.She notes that he did not believe that voting could or should create a General Will, in the Rousseauean Sense. He did not believe in using education as a form of propoaganda in civic studies, while his opinions were closer to the reservations of a Herder, a Holderin or a Kant than previously believed.

The book is not perfect.Although studiously documented, most of the quotes are from Smith and Condorcet themselves.More historical context could have been provided.There should have been more about actual historical studies of famines, and more on the political and social context of modern Scotland would have been very informative.And her defense of Condorcet would have been stronger if Rothschild had confronted the well-deserved reputation of Condorcet's colleagues in the Gironde for hypocrisy and demagoguery. But this is an important work, and it helps link one of the most familiar of "english" minds into a full international context.That in itself is praise enough.

Interesting but Frustrating
The subject is interesting. Putting Adam Smith in a historical context can reveal much about what he really wanted to say. But Emma Rothschild's writing style is frustrating. Time and again I would read a sentence and then ask "what did she just say?" and realize that it was a banal generality or that she could have expressed herself more directly. I studied history when in college and have read many well written books on intellectual history. Rothchild's book isn't one of them.

Where globalization began
This is an admirably lucid exposition of the beginnings (at the end of the 18th century) of thinking about economics and globalization.It offers a revision of received ideas about Adam Smith and, for me (not an economist, nor a student of same) it's an introduction to a fascinating figure, the Marquis de Condorcet.Some of it is a real revelation.

The biggest revelation is that the non-specialist can really follow it!

It's an important book. ... Read more

Product Description
Debate over the meaning of 'Enlightenment'began in the eighteenth century and has continued unabated until our own times. This period saw the emergence of arguments on the nature of man, truth, the place of God, and the international circulation of ideas, people and gold. In the second edition of her book, Dorinda Outram studies the Enlightenment as a global phenomenon, comparing it against the period's broader social changes. The new edition also features anew introduction and chapter on slavery, and the bibliography and short biographies have been extended. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

A good supplementary text to Enlightenment studies
I took a college course on the Enlightenment. The Outram book gave a slightly different perspective from the course texts. It was worth it.

Dire Performance
A typical example of Modern Academic Style -- impotent, equivocal, non-committal; everything is "problematic." It has some potential although unpleasurable use as an indication of the current state of academic debates concerning the Enlightenment (although on that score, it will go out of date fast), and it can point one in the direction of some better books, such as Albion W. Small's The Cameralists, an interesting, confident 1909 study that can still be read with pleasure and profit one hundred years after publication -- because of that very confidence (as well as the depth of Small's research). The mousiness of Outram's text is, by contrast, extremely unattractive.

Good with Some Limitations: 3.5
Books in this series are supposed to be written as introductions to important topics in European history, accessible to undergraduates or even advanced high school students.This book doesn't really meet these requirements.The Enlightenment is structured as a series of linked essays on important topics related to the Enlightenment.These include the social context of the Enlightenment, government and the Enlightenment, gender and the Enlightenment, etc.There is a short introductory chapter which is primarily devoted to historiography of the Enlightenment.The essays are generally quite good but don't really provide the needed overview or basic narrative to accomplish the stated aims for books in this series.This book is most useful as a series of summaries of recent scholarship on the Enlightenment and can be used most usefully by someone who already has significant knowledge in this area.For teachers, I'd recommend using this book as an ancillary to a basic narrative text or even in conjunction with something like Peter Gay's magisterial overview of the Enlightenment.For general readers, this book is most useful as a review of recent scholarship.
To the extent that this book has a theme, it would be the increasing appreciation of the diversity and complexity of the Enlightenment.Outram takes pains to show Enlightenment positions are being more variable than often presented.Following the work of others, she is concerned with rebutting or undermining what has been regarded as a canonical view derived from scholars like Peter Gay that the Enlightenment can be summarized as a liberal reform program.For Outram, as for others, The Enlightenment as a unitary phenomenon does not exist.She, like others, also objects to the tendency to align the Enlightenment with a relatively small group of French intellectuals.Much of this is well taken, and Outram's individual essays are very informative.The discussions of government and the Enlightenment, religion and the Enlightenment, and science and the Enlightenment are particularly good.
On the other hand, there problems with some of her thematic analysis.While the Enlightenment cannot perhaps be easily summarized, at least not in the way suggested by scholars like Peter Gay, the concept retains considerable power and integrity.This is implicitly acknowledged in the title of this book, which is after all, The Enlightenment, not Enlightenments.Implicit in Outram's discussions are recurrent themes such as the importance of reason, skepticism towards received authority, the desire to use knowledge to improve the human condition, etc., which are stated by people like Gay to be basic unifying features of the Enlightenment.Outram's discussions add nuance to traditional views but don't contradict them, and in some ways implicitly endorse them.I think Outram overstates the extent to which recent scholarship has qualified views of the Enlightenment.The recent emphasis on greater geographic variation of the Enlightenment is an example.Peter Gay himself made a good deal out of American participation in the Enlightenment and he was hardly the first scholar to do so.Smith, several Americans, and Kant have long been considered important figures of the Enlightenment.Since when have Glasgow, tidewater Virginia, and Konigsberg been part of the heartland of Europe.Outram disparages the emphasis on French intellectuals yet her own text repeatedly cites the experience and writings of Voltaire, Diderot, etc., undercutting her explicit point.
While Outram is a careful scholar and writer, she also commits some missteps.Her discussion of Hume's epistemology as part of a critique of 18th century science is somewhat offbase.She presents Hume's views correctly but incompletely.Hume thought of himself as carrying out a Newtonian program of research in human psychology and far from undercutting the validity of scientifically generated knowledge, he placed it in a privileged position.Her discussion of 18th century voyages of exploration and the tendency of European intellectuals to project utopian visions onto Pacific island societies is astute but she overlooks the fact there was probably a significant kernal of truth in reports of the utopian nature of these cultures.Because of their biological isolation, these societies lacked many of the epidemic diseases that plagued the rest of the world.For example, a high percentage of Cook's crew probably had disfiguring smallpox scars, something that would have been unknown in Polynesia prior to contact with Europeans.

An Intelligent and Concise Overview
Most history books tend to either be too long and in-depth on a topic of interest or too brief.This book is neither, which is especially impressive given that it clocks in under 200 pages and covers, essentially, a century.
Outram succeeds in her basic layout of the book and in her lack of "kiddie gloves" in respect to her audience.She opens the book with a discussion of differing interpretations of the Enlightenment, in particular an essay contest in a Berlin newspaper in 1785.Outram begins with a discussion of Kant's response to the question, "What is Enlightenment?"Throughout the book, the scholar responds to shortcomings of other historical analyses of the period and explores, in short, 15-page sections, specific questions regarding the Enlightenment.Outram wastes no time diving into the complex morass of the eighteenth century.Writing in clear, lucid prose with a quick style, Outram brings to light new ideas on the Enightenment while responding to more traditional interpretations in due course.
The history professor who is directing my seminar on Religious Toleration in Renaissance and Reformation Europe recommended this book.When I become a high school teacher, I'm pretty sure this is a text I will use. ... Read more

Product Description
This collection contains the first English translations of a group of important eighteenth-century German essays that address the question, "What is Enlightenment?" The book also includes newly translated and newly written interpretive essays by leading historians and philosophers, which examine the origins of eighteenth-century debate on Enlightenment and explore its significance for the present.
In recent years, critics from across the political and philosophical spectrum have condemned the Enlightenment for its complicity with any number of present-day social and cultural maladies. It has rarely been noticed, however, that at the end of the Enlightenment, German thinkers had already begun a scrutiny of their age so wide-ranging that there are few subsequent criticisms that had not been considered by the close of the eighteenth century. Among the concerns these essays address are the importance of freedom of expression, the relationship between faith and reason, and the responsibility of the Enlightenment for revolutions.
Included are translations of works by such well-known figures as Immanuel Kant, Moses Mendelssohn, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, and Johann Georg Hamann, as well as essays by thinkers whose work is virtually unknown to American readers. These eighteenth-century texts are set against interpretive essays by such major twentieth-century figures as Max Horkheimer, Jürgen Habermas, and Michel Foucault. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The enlightenment as question
While we still live in the ideological and political shadow of the enlightenment, we rarely entertain its complexity and differences. The enlightenment was more an arena of intellectual contestation than the simple progressive myth by which it is now mis-characterized. These works long difficult to obtain restore our access to the dynamic exchanges that marked this exciting philosophical period. ... Read more

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"Mandala" is an ancient Sanskrit word meaning "sacred circle that protects the soul." It also refers to the sacred cosmograms that serve as core symbols of all cultures. Westerners have been fascinated for centuries about the mandalas of the Hindu-Buddhist cultures of Asia, most often painted geometric diagrams of great beauty and sophistication, that draw the viewer into a realm of balance, harmony, and calm. But such diagrams are actually architectural blueprints of the purified realm of bliss that we can only realize through enlightenment. They represent three-dimensional spaces of personal and communal exaltation, palaces for the regal confidence of love, compassion, and universal satisfaction of self and other. Understanding their role in anchoring the world-picture of a culture or a person provides a new insight into the "mandalas" of our own culture – the national space anchored by the Washington monument and its environs, or the personal cosmological space anchored by the models of the solar system, the DNA double-helix molecule, and the atom.

This exquisite book, created by the teamwork of an art historian and a scholar of Tibetan Buddhism, clears away the veils of confusion and mystification, and reveals the artistic history and meditational function of the sacred mandalas that have graced the Asian civilizations for thousands of years from Mumbai to Japan. It is richly illustrated by color photographs of examples of mandalas from India, Tibet, China, and Japan from the ground-breaking exhibition presented by Tibet House U.S. in collaboration with the Asia Society and the Berkeley Museum of Fine Arts. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

never got the book. emailed no reply
wat the ell been emailing no response and i never got my book got super ripped off

Mandalas Explained
If you are a practitioner of tantric buddhism this book will help you understand your visualization process. Also useful for art historians.
I highly recommend this book. ... Read more

Product Description
Enlightenmentthinkers of the eighteenth century were committed to the ideal of reflectiveautonomy--the principle that each of us should think for ourselves, particularlywhen determining moral and political standards.In keeping with that era's reputation as "the age of reason," manyinterpreted autonomy in a distinctively rationalist way--privileging reflectivereason over all other mental faculties. However, otherleading philosophers of the era--such as David Hume, Adam Smith, and J. G.Herder--placed greater emphasis on feeling, seeing moral and politicalreflection as the proper work of the mind as a whole. They argued that withoutemotion, imagination, and sympathy we would be incapable of developing themoral sentiments that form the basis of our commitment to justice and virtue.

The Enlightenment of Sympathy reclaims thesentimentalist theory of reflective autonomy as a resource for enriching socialscience, normative theory and political practice today. The sentimentalistdescription of the reflective process is more empirically accurate than thecompeting rationalist description, and can guide scientists investigating theprocesses by which the mind formulates moral and political principles. Yetthe theory is much more than merely descriptive, and can also contribute to thephilosophical project of finding principles--including principles ofjustice--that wield genuine normative authority. Enlightenment sentimentalismdemonstrates that emotion is necessarily central to our civic life, and showshow our reflective sentiments can counterbalance the unreflective feelingswhich might otherwise lead our political principles astray. ... Read more

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In the early eighteenth century, Edinburghwas a filthy backwater synonymous with poverty and disease, and recently famous for religious persecution. When this small walled-off city surrendered to a handful of Highlanders in 1745, things had never looked bleaker. Yet by century's end, the ancient Scottish capital had become the marvel of modern Europe, thanks to a group of friends whose trailblazing ingenuity and passion for ideas changed the way all of us look at the world.

It was in Edinburgh that a unique gathering of the finest minds of the day came together and made breathtaking innovations in architecture, politics, science, the arts and economics, all of which continue to echo loudly today. This was a time of radical upheaval and advancement, and a place of such cerebral stature as to rival the Athens of Socrates. Adam Smith penned The Wealth of Nations. James Boswell produced The Life of Samuel Johnson. Alongside them, pioneers -- such as the philosophers David Hume and Adam Ferguson, the poet Robert Burns, the chemist James Black, the geologist James Hutton, and the novelist Sir Walter Scott -- transformed the way we understand our perceptions and feelings, sickness and health, relations between the sexes, the natural world, and the purpose of existence.

In Crowded with Genius, James Buchan, himself a Scot with a strong attachment to this history, beautifully reconstructs the intimate geographic scale and boundless intellectual milieu of Enlightenment Edinburgh. With the scholarship of a historian and the elegance of a novelist, he tells the story of the triumph of this unlikely town and the men whose vision brought it into being. Buchan has written an extraordinary account of the movement that turned Edinburgh from a city under siege into a hotbed of brilliant achievements that changed the course of history and gave birth to the modern mind.

Customer Reviews (5)

Nice piece of history
I enjoyed this dip into a pocket of history that I knew only by allusion from other works.Historical surveys are always entertaining; this one might have been improved by providing more depth and analysis--erudition--in probing the subtleties of the philosophical or economic world of the luminaries presented, or suggesting a reading program.

Disappointing
While Mr. Buchan provides interesting bits of knowledge, the book as a whole lacks a sense of cohesion to this reader. It seems torn between an attempt at a history of Edinburgh during a specific time and a random discussion of famous Scots of the same era.

While Mr. Buchan is a good writer, this is not a great book.

very disappointing
Because of its glowing reviews and my strong interest in learning more about Edinburgh and Scotland, I had high expectations for this book. I was very disappointed. It assumes that the reader has a strong knowledge of Scottish history, so the neophyte will not learn much. Yet, the book is written at such a superficial level that a knowledgeable person will learn nothing new. As another Amazon reviewer points out, the book is essentially themeless and has no point of view. I know that the book received many positive reviews, but it is difficult to know what audience will get much out of it. I havn't been this disappointed in a book for a long time.

Northern lights
According to Thomas Cahill, the Irish Saved Civilization.Perhaps so, but according to James Buchan it was the Scots who moved civilization forward to modern times.Even at that, it wasEdinburgh that became the pivot of the Scottish Enlightenment.With the expulsion of Bonnie Prince Charlie in 1745, the "auld Reekie", stinky, backward, provincial Edinburgh, was transformed into an intellectual hotbed.Philosophy, science, medicine and other fields found expression through this city to the world.Pushing aside the clans, tartans and the remains of the Celtic traditions, a new outlook developed in Scotland's capital.The speed of its rise was phenomenal.Within twenty years a wave of philosophers, scientists and poets, accompanied by a revision in social standards swept the city.

Analysing the Scottish Enlightenment is a monumental task.Controversies and inconsistencies abound.This Calvinist society rose to support a Roman Catholic pretender to the British throne.While condemning the Papacy as intruding on the lives of the faithful, the Scottish Kirk was thoroughly integrated into the education, politics and legal system of Edinburgh.Buchan neatly ties all these conflicting forces into a readable, highly detailed package.He is able to expose all these facets with minimal confusion as he introduces us to the major figures that would make the city a northern Athens.His focus is on personalities, with leading figures ambling, cavorting or dashing across the pages according to their style.

His first noteworthy figure is, of course, David Hume.Perhaps no individual set the tone for the Scottish Enlightenment as did Hume.Controversial and inconsistent in his own way, he struggled to shed the impediments of traditional dogmas while avoiding accusations of rebellion or heresy.He set the tone Edinburgh lights would follow - travelling the Continent, examining the human condition, and writing in "Southern English", as Buchan calls it.The language of London was a key element in what was to follow.English, instead of "Scottish English" would be the export licence conveying ideas up and down the British island, thence abroad.

Hume is followed by such notables as Adam Smith, John Home, the strange saga of James MacPherson's attempt to resurrect Scots' traditions by fabricating them, and the founder of geology, James Hutton.Other, lesser known lights, but surely contributors to this Northern Renaissance are dramatist Alexander Wedderburn, publisher Robert Chambers and the more practical contributions of George Drummond.There is more to Edinburgh's rise to prominence than the expressions of thoughtful men.In this period, the city descended from an enclave surrounding its "castle in the air" to build up the surroundings with residences, schools and market centres.The "salacious" hobbies of dance and the theatre intruded on the Kirk's disdain and overcame it.Promenading, weather permitting, was no longer hazardous.Although whisky replaced ale as the most consumed drink, imbibing moved from ale house to town house.This practice helped enable the role women to improve and conversations expanded to include both sexes.

Buchan has granted us a vivid and readable account of Edinburgh's burst of intellectual and social hatching.He does assume a certain level of knowledge on the reader's part - a level unlikely to be found on this side of the Atlantic.He graces the narrative with some illustrative material, but no matter how much the publishers include, there couldn't be enough.The maps of the city would be more useful if larger, but the tone the time is well conveyed.Some of his conclusions might be arguable, but his making Charles the son, and not the grandson, of Erasmus Darwin must be noted.[stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

Lots of Info, No Theme
This treatise is well-researched and chock-full of historical facts about an interesting period.But I often asked myself where Buchan was going with it all.There seemed no theme, except the simplest "Edinburgh was an interesting place then" or very narrow theses at best.
Also, the editing is sloppy.Paragraphs are misplaced, and there are occasional errors in spelling or grammar.Antecedents are missing or lost.
Another draft might have made for an excellent book. ... Read more

Product Description
Science and the Enlightenment is a general history of eighteenth-century science covering both the physical and life sciences. It places the scientific developments of the century in the cultural context of the Enlightenment and reveals the extent to which scientific ideas permeated the thought of the age. The book takes advantage of recent scholarship, which is rapidly changing our understanding of science during the eighteenth century. In particular it describes how science was organized into fields that were quite different from those we know today. Professor Hankins's work is a much needed addition to the literature on eighteenth-century science. His study is not technical; it will be of interest to all students of the Enlightenment and the history of science, as well as to the general reader with some background in science. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Historian of Science Hankins did great!
Hankins was my sr. thesis advisor at UW in the early 80s (pre-publication of this book). The scope of his learning is astonishing and his handling of the 18th c philosophes, technology and religion was great. I highly recommend this book. ... Read more

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When you are stumbling along through a dark and difficult time, take this little book with you. Let it be your guide. Let it comfort you, amuse you, and remind you of what you have probably forgotten. Let it show you that you are not alone.In this unique and deeply inspirational book, artist Barbara Lewis-Marco has captured the essence of the journey from crisis to understanding. Stumbling Toward Enlightenment combines illustrations with thoughtful phrases that encourage and guide with great compassion and humor. The simple wit and unpretentious wisdom found in these pages will make this book your companion as you face life's challenges with dignity and courage. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Delightful
Reading this review is most probably an indicator, that you stumbled at least one(?) time on your path. Keep reading, the stumbling goes easier and funnier now with Barbaras book. Gosh, there are so many paths, so manystructures, so many guides, so many channels to enlightenment - this bookinjects you with humor, a deep and funny understanding, and brings it allback to common sense. The combination of graphics and oneliners is reallyfunny!Yes, you can read any volume of anyHoly or not so Holy Scripture,and your mind gets on its trip. Try this one: open your heart, browsethrough this booklet, and may the warmth of love be with you. Compassionand smiles will join - guaranteed! Enjoy! ... Read more

Product Description
Long recognized as more than the writings of a dozen or so philosophes, the Enlightenment created a new secular culture populated by the literate and the affluent.Enamoured of British institutions, Continental Europeans turned to the imported masonic lodges and found in them a new forum that was constitutionally constructed and logically egalitarian. Originating in the Middle Ages, when stone-masons joined together to preserve their professional secrets and to protect their wages, the English and Scottish lodges had by the eighteenth century discarded their guild origins and become an international phenomenon that gave men and eventually some women a place to vote, speak, discuss and debate.Margaret Jacob argues that the hundreds of masonic lodges founded in eighteenth-century Europe were among the most important enclaves in which modern civil society was formed.In France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Britain men and women freemasons sought to create a moral and social order based upon reason and virtue, and dedicated to the principles of liberty and equality.A forum where philosophers met with men of commerce, government, and the professions, the masonic lodge created new forms of self-government in microcosm, complete with constitutions and laws, elections, and representatives. This is the first comprehensive history of Enlightenment freemasonry, from the roots of the society's political philosophy and evolution in seventeenth-century England and Scotland to the French Revolution. Based on never-before-used archival sources, it will appeal to anyone interested in the birth of modernity in Europe or in the cultural milieu of the European Enlightenment. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

An Important Scholarly Contribution to Freemasonry
This work is intellectually accessible to the educated, general reader who is willing to spend the time to read her notes and follow her arguments. She directs her scholarly attention to the charges against, or boasts of, some Freemasons, that the Craft was responsible for the French and American Revolutions. She answers both sides of the controversy with a qualified "yes", hastening to show that it was the already long-standing practice (in every sense) of self-government in masonic lodges that provided a blueprint for the rise of our respective constitutional governments, based on utopian ideas about the perfectability of man and society (at least as goals to strive toward). Any educated Freemason could have told Prof. Jacob that, but it is wonderful to have such distinguished academic testimony of this fact. On the other hand, a careful scrutiny of Benjamin Franklin's travels and contacts (even in Catholic Spain!) that led to foreign support of the Revolution might push her argument more in support of the commonly held belief.

I Disagree with the Prior Review
Ms. Jacob has done a wonderful job showing how the essentially non-mystic, scientific and artistic Enlightenment was "translated" into a political movement by the 18th century Masons. It is extremely well done.

The Mason's historic opposition to the Catholic Church - and to other authoritarian and non-democratic institutions of all kinds (including "Holy" Russia, as the prior reviewer chooses to call it) - political as well as religious, is well established historic fact and, as such, was critical to the development of modern western governments' tenants of religious toleration. THAT is history and THAT is Ms. Jacob's theme. Whether you approve of the Mason's or not, she clearly presents their critical role in history.

After reading and completely enjoying the book's scholarship and perspective, I wanted to let other readers know that, in my opinion, the prior review is simply a strong pro-Catholic and anti-Masonic view of history, and is not a review of the book, which is excellent.

Exalting the Evil
"Living The Enlightenment" is not an appropriate title for this absurd manuscript.Certainly, we cannot experience this period of European history by perusing this horribly written book.A better title would be, "Exalting the Evil".For that is, indeed, what Margaret C. Jacob does between the covers of this work.

The book stands as, more than anything else, a panegyric to the hideous legacy of freemasonic "Enlightenment" thought and political action that led to the bloody French Revolution, was ostensibly founded on the philosophy of the regicidal 17th Century English Revolution, and carried through to the even more horrible 20th Century Bolshevik Revolution.In the Bolshevik Revolution, its leaders, Trotsky and Lenin, both harkened back to their intellectual predecessors, the Jacobins who, were, of course, children of this "Enlightenment".

What did this movement, upon which Ms. Jacob casts such lavish encomiums in this ridiculous book, represent?The Masonic lodges of 18th century Europe, as recorded by Jacob and others were places of radical politics, anti-clericalism, elitism, and unspeakable sexual perversion.This is the essence of the evil that Ms. Jacob seeks to exalt.

As to style, the writing is terrible.We are reminded in suffering through Ms. Jacob's poor excuse for prose of Denis Fahey's description of another author curiously also surnamed Jacob, whom Fahey characterized, quite accurately, as employing a "studied vagueness of expression".For illustrative purposes, we will cite a couple of examples:

On page 113 of her text, occurs the following memorable sentence,

"The message in the preface is clear enough, if somewhat disguised."

In a similar vein, on page 198, Ms. Jacob regales us with the following:

"However much the Enlightenment's endorsement of human equality was tied inexorably to literate and polite culture and deeply distrustful of "the people", it was palpably different from the rationale that justified separate and privileged estates."

Perhaps there is an esoteric meaning to such gibberish.But on the face of it, it is, like the bulk of the corpus of this text, complete and utter nonsense.

Finishing this book was a release from darkness.We have read this book, so that others will not be so encumbered.To any university professors who may be considering using this book as an adjunct to their coursework, we would urge them to consider other alternatives.This is the type of writing that drives many sincere and motivated history undergraduates into other disciplines.
... Read more

Product Description
The Enlightenment is that crucial, and profoundly exciting, period between the late seventeenth century and the French Revolution. It was the great age of rationalism and tolerance, an age of boundless curiosity about the physical universe and the nature of the human mind, an age that rejected superstition in favor of observation and experiment to arrive at the truth--an age, in fact, that laid the foundations for the world in which we live.
With nearly four hundred illustrations selected from a wide array of sources, the book tells the fascinating story of the men and women of the Enlightenment in their search for definition and redefinition of the values of their time. Included are the range of ideas they explored--from coffee-house conversations to astronomy, from voyages of discovery to the investigation of dreams, from the first dictionaries and encyclopedias to new attitudes on marriage and women's rights. Theirs was an enthralling journey that reflected the intellectual revolution that transformed human consciousness. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Beautifully illustrated and well-balanced perspective
This book is another of Thames & Hudson's high-quality "coffee-table" type of publications that is beautifully illustrated. I don't believe there is another highly illustrated book like this that focuses entirely on the Enlightenment, so it fills a noteworthy gap in the literature. More importantly, Dorinda Outram's narrative is a needed antidote to the overbearing imbalance that has existed thus far in the English-speaking literature on the Enlightenment. Far too many books make it seem as if the Enlightenment was strictly a French or English affair, which, as Jonathan Israel has recently shown in his magisterial Radical Enlightenment, is a complete distortion. The reason for this is simple: American and British historians lack the language abilities to incorporate German intellectual history into their work, and there are more English translations of French philosophe literature available to them. The German Aufklaerung, or Enlightenment, was just as rich and dramatic as what was occurring in France and England, and the contributions that German thinkers make just as important to modern history. The Aufklaerung in Germany leads directly to the era of German Idealism, arguably the most significant period in the history of philosophy (including the Greeks). Outram's book gives a very different perspective than the anglocentric and francophile Enlightenment literature, one that is more balanced and accurate of the historical reality. With the stunning illustrations this book represents a much-appreciated contribution to Enlightenment literature.

About 60 watts of light
For an American reader, the chief attraction of Dorinda Outram's "Panorama of the Enlightenment" is its German orientation. Whether this gives a distorted overview of the period is a question.

We generally are presented with the Anglo-French perspective, and this seems right in the long context: The goals of the Enlightenment were realized -- to the extent they were realized -- in the English- and French-speaking areas. The Aufklarung, as the Enlightenment was called in the German states, fizzled out with the failure of the Forty-eighters.

Although this volume is part of a series of"Panoramas" of historical periods published by the J. Paul Getty Museum, it comes across more as a "Byways of the Enlightenment."

This is not just an artifact of Outram's excessive time spent in Wuerttemburg and Potsdam, compared to London and Paris (with hardly a word for Edinburgh, Philadelphia or Amsterdam), but of her penchant for uncovering what might be called the domestic side of the Enlightenment.

It is nice that so many artworks of the era can still be visited in Wuerttemburg but that is partly a testimony to Wuerttemburg's marginal significance, then and since. But I would not have thought anyone could have written 300 pages (well, OK, 100 pages and 200 pages of pictures) on the Enlightenment without mentioning Capability Brown.

For someone who knows little about the Enlightenment, this volume will give a distorted picture. For anyone who knows rather a lot about it (in the Anglospheric sense), it will provide a better balance than they usually get. Chacun a son gout, as the French say.

The other part of the "byways of the Enlightenment" approach is more attractive. Outram may skimp on gardening, but she delves into the importance of masked balls -- not a topic usually thought of as central to the Enlightenment, although she makes a case for it.

In a short text, obviously she can only skim off the cream of the Enlightenment. These "panoramas" are picture books with a fig leaf of commentary. The display of the pictures -- which I take to be the main point -- leaves much to be desired.

For one thing, it is absurd to blow up rough engravings with little detail to a full page, while shrinking a colorful, crowded painting to a sixth of a page. The hand of a book designer with little interest in the text is everywhere evident. Isambard Thomas is the culprit.

The possibilities for illustration were enormous, and with the resources of the Getty, could have been exploited to the full. In the outcome, the selection is . . . curious.

Overall, unimpressive. The last few pages, a discussion of what Theodore Adorno, Jurgen Habermas and Max Horkheimer thought about the Enlightenment, could have been dispensed with. But the very last pages, an idiosyncratic list of Enlightenment places that still can be visited, was a clever, welcome addition.



... Read more

Product Description
Does enlightenment have a dark side? It does, explains David Deida, "but instead of closing to what seems unloving, we can learn to open as what we would rather avoid." In Instant Enlightenment, this maverick author and teacher offers a "rude awakening" through a collection of daring exercises and practices intended to provoke, challenge, and immediately reveal the ever-present "love that lives all things." What's the filthiest thing you can say that still feels like, "I love you"? Can you "wear" the mood and shape of everyone and everything around you without fear or reservation? Which imagined action--sleeping, sexing, or dying to save another--most feels like liberation and unbound love? These are just some of the unconventional questions raised in Instant Enlightenment. Each pithy chapter encourages readers to blast the light of consciousness on the taboos we hide in shadow, from our ideas about sex and money to emotions and spirituality. "The secret to gifting your life's deepest purpose is to open through what you most resist, so your love's mission can bless the world," writes David Deida. InstantEnlightenment will surprise and possibly offend you--but it will lead you "fast and suddenly" to the realization of the sacred entirety of your experience. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (15)

Loved it!
This book is a great little handbook to take along, or just pick up occasionaly to boost your consciousness. It says things that have been unspoken for some time. It is a jolt to kick you out of the box of your previous thinking. In fact,it appears we "think" too much and as a result, we have been "experiencing" less. This book takes you a notch or two up in your reality...

So-So
I'm glad I read the review suggesting to get it from the library. It's OK, but it's not a keeper. There are some good discussions, and, there are some, not so enlightening discussions. Just my opinion.

Eh...
I'd recommend the superior man. I'm a huge fan of deida, but this one is basically the superior man, condensed and vulgar. It has certain appeal to those who like small, quick readings, but in the long run you'd be much better off with superior man.

Simple and to the point
This small and simple book gets straight to the point. Enlightenment is simple but it's not for the lazy. Thank goodness it's so rewarding. I recommend the reader take the book and do one exercise at a time... then see what happens.

Borrow it
I was able to borrow this from the library.I'm glad I didn't buy it as although it was witty and wise, it took me all of 15 minutes to read. My recommendation is to save your money and spend it on one of his other books. ... Read more

Product Description
Happiness is something everyone desires. Yet how to find happiness–or even if we deserve to–remains a mystery. Still more mysterious is the secret to a lasting happiness that cannot be taken away. In The Ultimate Happiness Prescription, bestselling author Deepak Chopra shows us seven keys to uncover the true secrets of joy in the most difficult times.

The goal of life is the expansion of happiness, he contends. But in today’s demanding world, that goal seems elusive, if not impossibly out of reach. Society reinforces the belief that fulfillment comes from achieving success, wealth, and good relationships. Yet Chopra tells us that the opposite is true: all success in life is the by-product of happiness, not the cause.

So what is the cause? The Ultimate Happiness Prescription shares spiritual principles for a life based on a sense of your “true self” lying beyond the ebb and flow of daily living. Simple daily exercises lead to eliminating the root causes of unhappiness and letting a deeper level of bliss unfold.

After all avenues to happiness have been explored and exhausted, only one path is left: the journey to enlightenment. In The Ultimate Happiness Prescription, the daunting and exotic challenge of finding enlightenment becomes accessible step by step. We are taken on an inspiring journey to the true self, the only place untouched by trouble and misfortune.

On the way we learn the secrets for living mindfully and with effortless spontaneity. Now happiness is no longer hostage to external events but an experience we carry with us always. As Chopra inspiringly concludes, “Everything we fear in the world and want to change can be transformed through happiness, the simplest desire we have, and also the most profound.” ... Read more

Customer Reviews (19)

Easy Reading
This book is very well written, in typical Chopora style.Help to put certain life experiences into presepective.

Happiness achieved
Had to have my own copy of this simple guide to remembering who we really are after reading it in the public library.I don't usually buy books in hard copy because of storage issues.This gem of a book is a must-own if one is serious about sustained happiness, joy and peace.

Deepak has penned an easy-to-understand guide to living one's life simply while attaining the wondrous gifts of right thinking and right action. By practicing the seven keys I have gained an insight into enlightenment that is profound and attainable by any who are so inclined.

Good read
Spirituality and Enlightement are difficult subjects to write about and Deepak's 50 odd books, essentially contain the same message - how do you make Happiness Permanent? If you are avid Chopra fan, you will enjoy the book - but the fact remains that if you take any of one of his books seriously and make Enlightenment the goal of your life - you might end up saving money.

Enjoyed spending time with this book
As always, this author presents a book full of ways to help the reader on their journey toward enlightenment, "soul improvement".

Happiness, so complicated yet so simple to experience.Beautiful book!

The Ultimate Happiness Prescription
As with all of Dr. Chopra's books, it is a very inspiring read. Lots of info for becoming a more centered and happier person, with many reason's why you should give up your negative thinking and live the happy life you deserve. ... Read more

Product Description
Critics have long treated the most important intellectual movement of modern history--the Enlightenment--as if it took shape in the absence of opposition. In this groundbreaking new study, Darrin McMahon demonstrates that, on the contrary, contemporary resistance to the Enlightenment was a major cultural force, shaping and defining the Enlightenment itself from the moment of inception, while giving rise to an entirely new ideological phenomenon-what we have come to think of as the "Right." McMahon skillfully examines the Counter-Enlightenment, showing that it was an extensive, international, and thoroughly modern affair. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

There was a "Counter Enlightment
Opposition to the ideas of the French Enlightenment and it's allies and disciples in other European countries is as old as the movement itself...and did exist.

"Newtonian physics it was believed had achieved such triumphs in the realm of inanimate nature could be applied with equal success to the field of ethics. " Perhaps?

"What the Enlightenment has in common is the denial of the central Christian doctrine of original sin.

Was it indeed about the church vs. The Medici?

Fascinating ideas addressed in this text.

Could have gone a little deeper?

Tries to be moderate, fails
Darrin McMahon has written a well researched and well written book.

However: In general, I found the author to come down on the side of the Jacobins and other French Revolutionaries, and thereby blind himself to the violence of the Terror, almost the philosophy that 'if you want an omellette, you need to break a couple of eggs.'Marx, Lenin and Stalin would agree.

From the evidence McMahon presents, it seems indisputable that the enemies of the [so-called] enlightenment predicted virtually to a T the fact that the writings of Voltaire and company would lead to the violent overthrow of altar and monarchy.Oddly, in some places McMahon mocks these predictions, and in other places reluctantly admits that they were on target.

Another problem i had with the book was its 'loaded language.'Only the Right is called "ultra," which usually has a bad connotation; surely there were some ultra revolutionaries?Paranoia and conspiracy theories are only attached to the thought of the right; surely the Left thought 'everyone was out to get 'em,' as in Catholic priests, royal officials, etc.Regarding paranoia:it is well known that even paranoids have enemies.This is another case where the Left believes that all its positions stem solely from Reason, so therefore anyone who disagrees with them must only be doing so from base emotional reactions, as in 'reactionaries.'Catholics are called "ideologues;"no one the Left were ideologues?Even the title of the book is loaded."enemies" of the enlightenment; well, enemies are usually considered the bad guys.How about "Restorationists versus those who prepared for the Guillotine?"that's about as fair as the title, but the title is alliterative.

Read with caution, and your red pencil in hand.

The Other Side of the Story
This book provides an excellent look at how the Enlightenment in France was seen by its enemies.McMahon discusses in detail the arguments made by religious and political thinkers who dissented from the liberalizing currents that swept Europe in the Eighteenth Century.His discussion of the use of invective and paranoid rhetoric by the Right is a worthy companion to Robert Darnton's studies of the same tactics employed by liberal enemies of the Ancien Regieme.

Rick Perlstein theorizes in his recent book "Before the Storm" that the Sixties were as much about the rise of the American Right as they were about the New Left. McMahon makes the same point about the liberalism of the Revolutionary era.The conservative movement defined both itself and the left in reaction to the influx of new ideas.This book is an excellent study of this phenomenon.

Useful
It is the most useful value of this book by Darrin McMahon that it shows the fallacy of those assumptions.There is, in McMahon's account a coherent and formidable counter-enlightenmnet ideology.It is not the pluralist and skeptical objections of a Herder or a Hamann, but the authoritarian, deeply Catholic and deeply illiberal world of Gerard, Seguir, Sabatier, Bonald and Barruel.The reader may wonder whose these people are, and in contrast to must recent writing critical of the Enlightenment, McMahon does not find these intellectuals worthy of much sympathy or intellectual admiration.The most famous of these is probably the Abbe Barruel, not for the acuity of his thought, but because he wrote in the late 1790s a book that became the bible of right-wing paranoia.In it he claimed that the French Revolution was a conspiracy of atheists, and Freemasons.As Norman Cohn pointed out a generation ago, this ideology would ultimately manifest itself in the forging of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

McMahon starts off with a chapter on pre-revolutionary Counter-Enlightenment which concentrates on Catholic and Royalist objections to the Enlightenment.He points out that many of them cited Rousseau against the deists and atheists, though later Rousseau would join Voltaire and Diderot as the anti-christ of the Enlightenment.In contrast to Furet he notes how conspiracy theories proliferated on the Counter-Enlightenment before the fall of the Bastille and as the years went on, fears of philosophe and Protestant conspiracies proliferated in the counter-revolutionary press.A particular virtue of McMahon's account is how well-documented it is.Too much revisionist history concentrates on only a few intellectuals, and concentrating on their exegesis.This is true of Keith Michael Baker's Inventing the French Revolution and for scholars such as Mona Ozouf who look at Robespierre and Saint Just, but not Barere or Carnot.McMahon is also useful on how this ideology formed a Counter-Enlightenment international, that spread its influence most in Catholic countries (though Edmund Burke did give Barruel a warm and most undeserved endorsement).Contra Joan Landes he reminds us of the obvious fact the leading supporters of female subordination were on the Counter-Enlightenment Right.He is useful in citing Timothy Tackett on the rise of conspiracy theory paranoia in revolutionary France, as well as Sheryl Kroen's work on the Restoration Regime.

There are some reservations to be made about the book.There is a tendency to over-emphasize the similarities between left and right (especially in these days when the similarities in America between right and center are all too evident).While it is true that the fears of both extremes fed the other, McMahon does not explain why the center failed to hold if its opponents were so patently paranoid.(My answer:arguably they weren't).Nor is McMahon as clear as he could be on the "modernity" of the Counter-Enlightenment.To some extent, describing something as modern is almost tautological.After all the World Trade Center was attacked with airplanes, not torches.How could one live and have an effect on the modern world without sharing some of its modernity?In pointing out that the Counter-Enlightenment wanted a revived Catholicism that was utopian to demand, McMahon does not sufficiently probe whether any political movement could survive without an appeal to something beyond the actually existing.McMahon also spends surprisingly little time discussing Joseph De Maistre, certainly the most important of these intellectuals.Nor is he entirely fair to Adorno and Horkheimer's The Dialectic of Enlightenment, which does explicitly state that Enlightenment is essential to any hope for a better society.Adorno explictly stated that the only cure for the dilemmas of reason were more reason.McMahon cites Robert Darnton's critique.But Darnton fails to mention Adorno's defence of reason, and he makes his cases by citing the "good guys" of the Enlightenment.It is true, and important to remember, that Diderot admired Tahitian society and that Condorcet was open-minded and pluralistic.But it is also true that Hume and Kant indulged slavery and white supremacy and that Bentham was notoriously unimaginative and dogmatic.The scientism of a Teller or a Galton or a Heisenberg may be a heresy, but it is not a minor or incidental one.Notwithstanding these criticisms, however, this is an important book.

Something you didn't learn in college
It's hard to write about the early history of the right wing because the real right has never been very well represented in the US and because the Enlightenment and the Revolution tend to crowd out the Counter-Enlightenment and Counter-Revolution. McMahon's book is the best there is on this subject in English and I know of nothing better in French or any other language.There aren't a lot of pages but they cover a tremendous lot of ideas and thinkers.Fans of political thought from any wing will be fascinated. ... Read more

Product Description
The Enlightenment is an authoritative anthology of the key political writings from "the best and most hopeful episode in the history of mankind." The texts are supported by a lucid introduction exploring their moral, philosophical, political and economic background. Biographical notes and carefully selected bibliographies offer further help. David Williams, a distinguished Enlightenment scholar, offers thereader a view of the evolution of Enlightenment political thinking in a variety of contexts. Students of political science, history, European studies, international relations, law and philosophy will find this an invaluable resource. ... Read more

Product Description
You're invited to join in the seriously playful adventure of "digging the cosmic ordinary"-exploring our own cultural backyard to discover the profound enlightenment teachings hidden there in plain sight. In thirty-three illustrated mini-chapters, meditation teacher Dean Sluyter reveals the startling, sometimes hilarious connections between the highest revelations and the lowliest jingles, jokes, and cliches:*"Knock-Knock, Who's There?" teaches the same process of radical self-inquiry advocated by Hindu masters;
*"Mary Had a Little Lamb" expounds the way of love and devotion as eloquently as the Gospels;
*"Home on the Range" celebrates the anarchic freedom of enlightenment; and
*"Easy Does It," a principle as precise as E=mc2, describes both the workings of the universe and the mechanics of meditation.The author shows us that Christ and Buddha bring the same good news of cosmic liberation-and so do B. B. King, Mother Goose, Mick Jagger, and Alfred E. Neuman. And he shares spiritual exercises (some traditional, some home-brewed) that are powerfully transformative. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (15)

why i love this book...
i have already read dean sluyter's zen commandments and thought it was wonderful. but this book why the chicken crossed the road was even better. it was very funny, eyeopening and enlightening. it made me see things i never saw or thought about before. it showed how caught up we get in detailsof our beliefs.. this book was not about beliefs. it was about living them.. i would recommend this book to anyone. i wish it was still in print. i would send it to many of my friends.. i will be re reading as well. it has so much to it.. a blessing of a book...

Thank You Mother Dean
Dean Sluyter has an uncanny ability to make the mundane mystical. He takes phrases and songs, slows down time, and holds the words up to the sun turning them over in his hand and inside your mind to extract a much deeper meaning. His deconstruction of Row Row Row Your Boat is worth the price of admission alone. I am as college educated as the next guy and I was giggling like a monkey by the time I had completed the book. Then I gave it to a repairman, a friend of mine, mechanically a genius but completly unread, and he retured it the next morning at 7am because he 'just had to talk to somebody about it, about life, about meaning" and we had a conversation like philosophers over a cup of my horrible coffee. So I say again, Thank you Dean Sluyter. If you are ever in Newport Oregon please stop by. You seem like the coolest guy in America.

A little bit of wisdom in a confusing universe.....
My father bought this book for me when I was going through spiritual difficulties in High-School.I still read it when life gets tough.

A masterpiece ofEuropean post-war prose!
If you like chickens, you'll love a "A Tale of Two Cities!"

Funky, funny, practical
This may be the smartest, funniest, and most practical guide to the spiritual path I have ever read. By using funky American pop culture (knock-knock jokes, "Doggie in the Window," etc.) as his jumping-off point, Sluyter manages to present enlightenment in a way that anyone can connect with. He writes with a wonderful openness that embraces Zen, Jesus, rock 'n' roll and Mad magazine in one big hug - yet he never goes New Age sloppy, but lays out the What's What of spiritual development with precision. A must! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Good
This book contains many good articles about the kundalini. Unfortunately, there are also a few flops among them, for example the entirely theoretical article of Ken Wilber 'Are the chakras real'. Still, good as a starting point to learn about the kundalini

I wasn't sure how to rate this one....
....because while it's an excellent collection by leading experts on kundalini phenomenon, some of them use their space in the book to evangelize their own particular brands of enlightenment.I've heard enoughof that not to want more.Still, the book itself belongs on the shelf ofstudents of both kundalini and Spiritual Emergence.A useful resource.

Everything Kundalini
I put this book right next to Healing the Split by John Nelson as two of the best books on Kundalini. One reason is that they both holistically look at theories, personal accounts and scientific research. They also exploreindividual/social relationships. Both are very well rounded and groundedbooks that should always available on the market!

An excellent source for the beginning seeker.
This book provides one of the broadest views on the subject of Kundalini. The various teachers provide their views and experience on the subject.Itis perhaps the best book for someone to get aquainted with the concept ofKundalini.I highly recommend this book, as well as any book by GopiKrishna. ... Read more

Product Description
Deepak Chopra has discovered the delights—and frustrations—of golf, and he is passionate about the game. Confronted by the wild ups and downs of his own play, he consulted with golf professionals and developed a new approach to the game that any golfer can follow—from the novice to the expert. The results can be measured not only in increased enjoyment and skill, but also in greater wisdom about life beyond the 18th hole.

Chopra’s own game has improved dramatically since incorporating the elements of his program. Instead of focusing on the mechanics of a “perfect” swing, Chopra reveals how golf can be mastered through mindfulness, a form of awareness that combines sharp focus and relaxation at the same time. Expanded awareness, he tells us, can accomplish much more than external mechanics to improve one’s game.

But Golf for Enlightenment is also an engrossing story about Adam, an Everyman who is playing a terrible round of golf when he meets a mysterious young teaching pro named Leela. In seven short but profound lessons detailing spiritual strategies, she teaches Adam the essence of a game that has much to explain about life itself.
Chopra has spent the last year taking the unique message in Golf for Enlightenment nationwide, teaching the essential tenets of his program at lectures and seminars to golfers everywhere. His message continues to help players turn an obsession into a positive life path. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (15)

Tony
The service by the lady in Montana was excellent as was the condition of the book.

He's done it again!
What a fabulous book Deepak Chopra has written.

I purchased this book to open my father up to the possibility that there is more to life than what are senses can inform us.He is a world famous chemist, and appropriately, a pretty fine golfer, yet he has little faith in the Unseen forces that many of the saints declare to actually exist.

Currently, he is reading this book as he vacations in Mexico, and I trust that it will candidly open his heart up to a new perspective on life and the exciting possibility of higher yet experiencial states of consciousness which are our birthright to acknowledge and experience in our daily lives.

Every page of this book strikes a cord in the heart, resonating somewhere deep within and reminds us that, even though we play competitive daily games to often survive or simply to entertain us, there is an Infinite Game that, when acknowledged, leads us to our hearts, helps us to excel, and bonds us with the rest of humanity's desire to understand and express what it means to be truly human.

I seriously recommend this book to anyone and I know that my father will be better off after having read it.I can't wait to talk to him when he get's back and play golf together when the spring comes..I love him.

Thank you Deepak Chopra

Strained Format
Dr. Chopra offers good advice for the "feel" aspect of golf -- getting out of the head and into the moment, turning down the interior noise, breathing deeply, swinging with a conviction based on interior knowledge rather than exterior sight.All that is timeless, supremely useful, and clear when Chopra writes from the first-person, in his introduction and chapter summaries.But I wish he hadn't felt it necessary to wrap his counsel in the gauze of the ridiculous fairy tale of Adam and Leela, which fluffs his brief teaching up to book-length. Perhaps some people learn better this way, but such contrived dream sequences as these bring only confusion to my mind, as well as evoking the scorn that hard-headed realists feel for all things "New Age."

Who's guess that Deepak could hit a hole-n-one on Golf... A+
Who's guess that Deepak could hit a hole-n-one on Golf... A+ listen as an Audion CD or download. This is excellent book to kill time on a long drive or to listen to in the background as you work on the computer.

Amazing how Deepak can tie improving your golf game to the challenge of improving your life. I highly recommend but then I haven't found anything from Deepak Chopra that I don't find of excellent value.

Try it, you'll not be disappointed... especially the audio version.

Approaches mental aspect of golf uniquely.
I think this is a good book on golf on the mental side.However, I don't agree with that a golf swing just disappears.With the proper technique, the effective golf swing will not disappear.I also like the book he had written many years ago called Creative Visualization--great mental imagery.In addition, I found Patrick Leonardi's book titled:
"The Ultimate Golf Instruction Guide: Key Techniques for Becoming a Zero Handicap Golfer or Better" one of the greatest books I've read on golf instruction.At first I was skeptical about this book after hearing from my friends how much this book helped them lower their scores.I'm convinced now because after utilizing "The Ultimate Golf Instruction Guide" now I not only score below 90( which I never have done before in my golfing career) but now I actually broke 80. Well worth the time to learn these techniques and it's way better than taking golf lessons. ... Read more

Product Description
This study moves beyond the treatment of the original enlightenment doctrine as abstract philosophy to explore its historical dimension. Drawing on a wealth of medieval primary sources and modern Japanese scholarship, it places this discourse in its ritual, institutional and social contexts, illuminating its importance to the maintenance of traditions of lineage and the secret transmission of knowledge that characterized medieval Japanese elite culture. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

A Benefit for Eggheads (like me)
This book was pretty weighty - real live scholarly work, rather than simple sectarian gloss.I particularly enjoyed the way Professor Stone placed the religious leaders of the time into their proper historical context and showed the way the traditions cross-pollenated with each other.The part on Nichiren was most informative, and gave an objective perspective on the events which occurred after Nichiren's death.Cool pictures of lots of mandalas, too.

Major insights into Tendai Buddhism
Original Enlightenment and the Transformation of Medieval Japanese Buddhism by Jacqueline Ilyse Stone (Studies in East Asian Buddhism, No. 12:University of Hawaii Press) Being recognized as a major study in Buddhist studies and recognized as one of the best religious studies books of 2000, Original Enlightenment and the Transformation of Medieval Japanese Buddhism represents some important historical and conceptual clarifications of perennial themes in Mahayana Buddhism.
From flyleaf: Original enlightenment thought (hongaku shiso) dominated Buddhist intellectual circles throughout Japan's medieval period. Enlightenment, this discourse claims, is neither a goal to be achieved nor a potential to be realized but the true status of all things. Every animate and inanimate object manifests the primordially enlightened Buddha just as it is. Seen in its true aspect, every activity of daily life?eating, sleeping, even one's deluded thinking?is the Buddha's conduct. Emerging from within the powerful Tendai school, ideas of original enlightenment were appropriated by a number of Buddhist traditions and influenced nascent theories about the kami (local deities) as well as medieval aesthetics and the literary and performing arts.
Scholars and commentators have long recognized the historical importance of original enlightenment thought but differ heatedly over how it is to be understood. Some tout it as the pinnacle of the Buddhist philosophy of absolute nondualism. Others claim to find in it the paradigmatic expression of a timeless Japanese spirituality. According to other readings, it represents a dangerous antinomianism that undermined observance of moral precepts, precipitated a decline in Buddhist scholarship, and denied the need for religious discipline. Still others denounce it as an authoritarian ideology that, by sacralizing the given order, has in effect legitimized hierarchy and discriminative social practices. Often the acceptance or rejection of original enlightenment thought is seen as the fault line along which traditional Buddhist institutions are to be differentiated from the new Buddhist movements (Zen, Pure Land, and Nichiren) that arose during Japan's medieval period.
Jacqueline Stone's groundbreaking study moves beyond the treatment of the original enlightenment doctrine as abstract philosophy to explore its historical dimension. Drawing on a wealth of medieval primary sources and modern Japanese scholarship, it places this discourse in its ritual, institutional, and social contexts, illuminating its importance to the maintenance of traditions of lineage and the secret transmission of knowledge that characterized medieval Japanese elite culture. It sheds new light on interpretive strategies employed in premodern Japanese Buddhist texts, an area that hitherto has received little attention. Through these and other lines of investigation, Stone problematizes entrenched notions of "corruption" in the medieval Buddhist establishment. Using the examples of Tendai and Nichiren Buddhism and their interactions throughout the medieval period, she calls into question both overly facile distinctions between "old" and "new" Buddhism and the long?standing scholarly assumptions that have perpetuated them. This study marks a significant contribution to ongoing debates over definitions of Buddhism in the Kamakura era (1185-1333) , long regarded as a formative period in Japanese religion and culture. Stone argues that "original enlightenment thought" represents a substantial rethinking of Buddhist enlightenment that cuts across the distinction between "old" and "new" institutions and was particularly characteristic of the medieval period.

New Insight on Medieval Tendai and Kamakura Buddhism
Is Enlightenment something that we acquire?Or are we really Enlightened already and just have to realize that?Is Enlightenment something that will take us uncounted ages to achieve?Or can we achieve Enlightenment inthis life and in this body?Such were some of the key issues of MedievalJapanese Buddhism.Some of the most popular conclusions, that we areEnlightened already, i.e. are Originally Enlightened, and that we canachieve Enlightenment in this life and in this body, remain both popularand controversial even today.Jacqueline Stone takes us into the littleknown world of the Tendai temples and hermitages on Mt. Hiei, the statelymountain above Kyoto, where much of the doctrine of Original Enlightenmentthought was developed -- and whence it spread to the famous founders ofKamakura Buddhism, including Honen and Nichiren.Stone gives us a panoramaof what was going on, what we known about it (not enough), and the longhistory of what happened and the debates that continue down to the present,debates that involve scholars, sectarian apologists, and the religiouspractice of many people, not just in Japan, but around the world.Afundamental book for one of the great, and still growing, religioustraditions in the world.

Invaluable for Nichiren Buddhists
Dr. Stone has provided an invaluable window into the current state of Japanese scholarship around the issues of orignal enlightenment teachings (hongaku shiso) and its role in the formation of Kamakuran Buddhism andNichiren Buddhism in particular.I believe that she quite successfullybrings out the complexities of this teaching and shows that it does notnecessarily lead to antinomian conclusions and that it was not summarilyrejected by the founders of Kamakuran Buddhism including Nichiren. Thechapter on Nichiren in this book could also stand alone as an excellentguide to Nichiren's teachings and practice.She shows that there is muchmore to Nichiren Buddhism than vainly repeating the Sino-Japanese title ofthe Lotus Sutra in order to gain worldly benefits.She really brings outthe depth and profundity of Nichiren Buddhism. This book, however, is notan apologetic for Nichiren Buddhism or even for original enlightenmentteachings.Dr. Stone maintains a very objective and impartial stancethroughout the book (which could be disturbing to those for whom thisreligion and these issues are literally a matter of life and death).Sheprovides both the pros and the cons of the issues that she addresses.Sheis not so much providing a new theory about Nichiren Buddhism or originalenlightenment so much as she is attempting to show that originalenlightenment and its impact on Japanese Buddhism needs to be reevaluatedand that the issues are far from black-and-white. I would highlyrecommend this book to serious scholars of Japanese Buddhism and to thosewho want to delve more deeply into the current state of scholarship inJapan surounding Nichiren Buddhism.This is not, however, a book for thosewho want simple answers to simple questions, or who want a primer onNichiren Buddhism.For those hard core Nichiren Buddhists and scholars whowant to find out the real truth about Nichiren Buddhism and the developmentof the Nichiren tradition, this book is worth every penny of its rathersteep price tag.

Namu Myoho Renge Kyo, Ryuei Michael McCormick ... Read more

Product Description
A comprehensive, easy-to-understand guide to the use of crystals and gems for internal growth, healing, and balance in your daily life. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (16)

good for the beginner crystals fan
This book is great for someone who knows little about crystals and wants to start learning how crystal healing works.

Crystal Enlightenment review
Lots of interesting information about the healing properties of stones and their uses in Chakra layouts. It reflects a lot of the information I am reading in today's material. I can't help but get a sense that this book, as well as Volume 2 and 3, likely provided the informational source of books written today. Good stuff.

Lots of Enlightenment
Whether you are new to crystals or continuing your passion, you will want this book for your collection. The book provides a cursory overview of crystals and provides great insight into the laying of stones. This author was mentioned has a healer and crystal specialist by Drunvalo.

Crystal Knowledge
This is the 1st in a series of 3 crystal books by Katrina.They are well written, easy to understand, and provide very useful information.The other 2 books are Volume II "Crystal Healing" (1987), and Volume III "The Crystalline Transmission" (1990). If you are really interested in stones and crystals and their possible relationship to healing (yourself or others), knowledge and so much more, I suggest this series of all 3 books by Katrina.You probably want to read these volumes in order unless you already know some of this energy and crystal stuff.(Many people who are into crystal knowledge will tell you that crystals are used in healing to direct the flow of energy and/or to store and pass on knowledge.Many people feel the energy in crystals, and have received a variety of experiences with their use.I know this may be difficult for some of you to believe, but open your mind to the possibility and believe as a child, at least long enough to explore the possibility.)

Katrina explains what crystals are, physically and esoterically and how they are formed and mined.She then goes into how to use them, meditations, cleaning and recharging the, and healing layouts.She talks about several kinds of crystals, such as the Record-Keeper (which I was pleased to find one in Alberta Canada) and other crystals such as amethyst, citrine, smoky quartz, etc. as well as other healing stones: bloodstone, malachite, lapis, etc.Of course, I've heard it said that a Record Keeper finds YOU.

The final chapter includes several charts:
Astrological Trinities Chart (associated astrological signs with planetary influences through related stones--example: Heart Chakra, sign-Cancer, stones-moonstone, opal, purpose-balance or intention of emotions, etc).

Table of Remaining Healing Stones
(example: WULFENITE-orange-energizes and purifies physical body)

Table of Color Chakra Stones
(example:1st charka, "Muladhara", physical areas of anus, rectum, colon, adrenal gland, color black or red, stones-bloodstone, etc, energy-ground spirit forces in body.Gain ability to work lovingly on the physical plane.)

Diagram of Main Chakra Points for Stone Placement

This book is a nice addition to my library, but I also like Melody's "Love Is In The Earth".It provides a lot more information on each of a lot more stones, not just crystals.Still, Katrina Raphaell does give a lot more information on crystals. I was exceptionally pleased with her explanation of the Record Keeper crystal.She also explains good healing techniques in using stones, such as how to use rose quartz on the heart charka, and other healing techniques with other stones.As I said, her books are a welcome addition to my library.If you're really interested in stones and their metaphysical uses and qualities, I would suggest buying both Raphaell's series of 3 books and Melody's "Love Is In The Earth".

This book has been around, and is still better than most!
Use this one as a good basis for learning how to commune with manyh different crystals. Katrina introduces many stones of value to the practitioner, though she has yet to create a comprehensive list all in one volume.

This book also introduces the art of laying-on-of-stones. Although this is one that requires a little more patience and practice, it can be a very useful tool with which to become acquainted.

I highly reccomend this volume to all students of crystal healing, but for those more interested in more advanced practices, feel free to move on to the other books. ... Read more